David O’Meara

 

After the Funeral

 

Some stayed prisoner on that hill for hours,

still as the chiseled stone; others shut the doors

of cars, and drove back to their hotel, or home,

prisoners

 

to that hill in years yet to come. And some

of us gather, as is due, to drink and bequeath

unto ourselves an estate of memory not reclaimed

by death.

 

Through the candid gloom of the bar I watch you

mourning there amid the faces, a hall of mirrors

reflecting all that grief can use, the amends

and errors

 

that tally up a life, warped by last assessments.

I hold myself in cool remove, stubborn over beers.

Crudely wanting, times like this, to be like you.

In tears.

 

 

The Pressure in His Head

 

Like pond ice, fat with the lag of dead

toads and algae, hard volume of

winter water. Cracking at the margins

like cottage gunshots. Thirty below,

a sidewalk sundered under frost.

His temples. Ingress of a glacial nudge,

 

or groan. Or shook fuselage, loosened

from altitude, hunting the graceless bump

of runway, rattles its flaps, tautens

against the worsted hawsers of turbulence. His

temples. Birdnests of blood. His temples.

 

Four wet lanes crammed with Hyundai

and Nissan, waxed lozenges sashaying

through slush. Brinkmanship of brakelights. His

temper. Inches on. Tailgated to misery.

Undeft fingers fumble Gordian boot-

laces, ticklish as mousetraps. Profound

 

dread. Or diving suit, Vernesque, in leagues seized

with the suasion of going deeper, narcotically

pressed for the seabed, every spare

square. His head, god, his head. 

 

 

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