Late Memorial

Electronic speakers replaced the rusted bell at St. Mary’s;
on my way homethe synthetic clang
sounded for a funeral.


The Keltasaurus is dead.
I felt rain on dried blood
as panic thundered and my mind flooded
with wet leaves; heavy green memories
dripping with the fragments of a ghost.


He was thirty-two when he choked on his vomit
after mouthwash and beer for eight days straight.
His body lay in the cemetery for eight months
before we took time to remember him.

Loss preaches loss over the initiation of raindrops
cruelly pummeling oak leaves. I arrive home
to a squall of sobbing branches, rain soaked
neighbors with cell phones and concerned faces.

The yard was submerged in green,
surging with each sheet of rain.

I still hear the old church bell, damp and blunt,
startling our neighbor's calico cat. She was hunting
wet rabbits in the uncut grass, oblivious to the death toll.