“…So make each grain a universe,
each universe an origin that billows into next and next” ~ Daniel Tobin
The living take
pictures of the dead
lying in state— the form
they’ve left behind,
the body’s wrappers held
in place a few more days
before the crematorium’s heat
or fertile soil usher the cells
into the mystery of their afterlife.
Stiff and posed in pleats
of satin, flower-framed within
the box of metal or of pine:
as if they know to suffer this
one more nicety before taking
to the open road.