Disposals
1. Sky Burial
High in the Himalayas
denied wood for a pyre
or place for a grave,
sky burial is practiced.
Say farewell to father,
this life being over,
excarnation achieved;
recite the prayers
at a discreet distance;
leave flesh to the
vultures -
they deserve to eat well.
Bones harbour no disease.
Father's soul is
somewhere
altogether elsewhere.
*
2. After Cremation
Your ashes, if they're to
be
scattered at sea,
should first be
mixed
with rose petals
generously.
These will prolong the
ceremony
and increase its beauty.
But the marine service
that will do this for a
fee
warns that - were you
once
a dolphin-watcher on the
bay,
should conditions on the
day
suit, and the spot be
likely -
your friends and family
may be surprised by
the sudden upsurge
of one of those dolphins
mouth open wide
as if curiously
alive to the possibility
of salt-water ash and
rose-petal tea.
*
3. Service for One Who Sang
When the
singer-songwriter died young,
many beside family and
friends
attended his funeral.
The old church on
Agitation Hill,
Castlemaine, was packed,
mourners stood in the
doorway.
The organ did not play
that day -
a women's choir, the Chat
Warblers, sang
their open-air
spirituality.
The voice of Michael
Kennedy
himself sounded through
the p.a. -
personal, truthful -
consolingly.
His widow had rare
strength to speak
while her toddler clung
to Grandad,
and we recalled the
modesty
of her lost one's many talents,
which even included
pottery
and instrument-making.
His illnesses were not
dwelled on,
but were part of his
chronology
in the memorial booklet.
A double lung transplant!
for a man who sang!
and
sang to the end so
touchingly.
Michael row the boat
ashore,
he had sung and we now
sang:
River Jordan is chilly
and cold,
Chills the body but not
the soul.
River Jordan is deep and
is wide,
I've got a home on the
other side.
[Christ Church,
Castlemaine Vic., 26 August 2013]
*
4. Springvale: a Visit
You drive an age
beyond all landmarks
then start to feel
you're almost there.
Sure enough, discreet
signs
point you off the highway
into what no longer calls
itself
The Necropolis.
'Botanical Cemetery',
please, as if plants
are buried here.
No, countless
roses bloom
everywhere this week,
and signs encourage us
towards magnolia gardens,
fuchsia - on and on.
We know which
chapel, glimpse
the family whose mourning
we're here to join,
all except their old man.
His framed portrait
fronts us in our pews.
Mild, upright citizen
capable of sternness.
The widow, married
sixty
good years, now
frail,
leaning on frame and
daughters, stoical.
The son's
eulogy mixes
the earnest and the
humorous.
A long, active life
of service and family,
work, sport, travel,
home. Blessed, mostly.
The deaconess tells
of the best
of parishioners and
councillors.
The Lord is our Shepherd.
Prayer. Amen. She
has to reach up
to scatter on the
high coffin
symbolic Ashes to Ashes.
The family leads us out.
Pallbearers not
required.
A whirring under the
coffin
signals it's sinking.
Nothing to be done
but walk to the tearoom
past blossoms, flowering
shrubs and trees, water.
The old man's portrait
has come too, benign
as we take refreshment
and ask after each other.
Another time, look for
'The Garden of No
Distant Place'.
The first exit gate is
locked.
The second obliges.
The drive home seems
quicker
than the previous
one
from the familiar
to the distantly remote.
*
5. For Whom the Bellbirds Toll
Buy me a plot,
last-home-buyer, book a late
berth in the burial
ground by Arthurs Creek*
under the gums where
wattle-birds cooee.
Yonder glooms the
watershed dividing range:
Mt Disappointment nods to
Mt Despair,
and beyond is the back of
beyond.
A better place than most
to be seen dead in,
it will take no getting
used to.
Bid me an imperturbable
bye-bye:
tears need not be
spilled. Dearest,
I must go without thee.
Non-being
needn't be unbecoming -
mine nor anyone else's.
Friends, gather this once
on the cemetery
slope, near the
grave-digger's galvo shed.
I will have absented
myself from this send-off.
Bundle the burdensome
remainder
in a deep-dug undisturbable
bed; see to
a slab of blue-stone,
please, so bones stay put.
If the day is warm,
bellbirds may be
about their repetitious
business,
tolling as if for me…and
thee; for all.
© Max
Richards
///
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