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(Part 2 of Trilogy for My Father)

We stand on cemetery Astroturf
strategically placed to spare us the dread hole,
snow scaling the tops of our shoes
to compete with the ice in our hearts.

The old priest’s boots peek from beneath
a cassock that dangles below his parka.
He jokes gamely about the weather,
reading prayers for my father, a man he never met,
with shaking hands and chattering teeth.
He is a stranger recruited by the others lest someone
discover the shame of self-inflicted death.

Numb in every way it’s possible to be numb,
we await the blows of a grief that suicide denied us
and summon memories that refuse to respond 
while, in their place, we have 
Astroturf
and snow.

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