Trumpets
There you are
lying flat in that expensive box
with bronze handles
and white padding,
while just across the hill
lie your mother and father
sinking into sod
forgotten under their flat piece of bronze
with it’s hide-away flower pot.
You
who hated being in the Army
that year of 1944,
have flags
and fuss and marching bands
over your head
as irritants to your long wait.
Mother won’t be coming.
She faded into a box
that sat forever in her favorite chair
ashes in plastic in cardboard
one day gone
perhaps thrown overboard,
by her third husband,
at sea
or in the bay
perhaps thrown into the trash
in a moment of drunken
Anger
or flat out meanness
toward those who live.
Soon
I’ll have a little box in death
just as my step-father did.
He too has trumpets
and a rifle or two
booming out
over the greensward above
Nearby
his mother lies
calling him eternally to task
for his undone and cruel life.
Copyright © Mage Bailey | Year Posted 2021
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