Poetry Editor’s note: As we noted last week, we’re proud to be featuring Michael Lind’s work at Liberty Island. This is the second of eight poems.
Funeral women are always at services,
strangers to whom the deceased was unknown.
Widowed and pious, their notion of service is
letting nobody be buried alone.
Floating in back, they reflect on the homily,
join in the hymn and take part in the prayer.
Though you are buried away from your family,
funeral women are sure to be there.
***
Photo by carolynabooth (Pixabay)
Michael Lind is the author of more than a dozen books of nonfiction, fiction and poetry, including The New Class War and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States. His narrative poem The Alamo was named one of the best books of the year in 1997 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review and Bluebonnet Girl, his children’s book in verse illustrated by Kate Kiesler, won an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio prize. He has been an editor or staff writer at The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic and The National Interest and is a columnist for Tablet and Project Syndicate and a fellow at New America, a nonpartisan think tank he co-founded in 1999. A fifth generation native of Austin, Texas, Lind has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
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