Blue suit, pressed
white shirt, red tie,
trimmed hair,
camouflaged lump
where the bullet
went in.
Mourners follow
the tearful track,
mother leaning
on father’s long arm,
siblings swamped
by the stark face
of death, young
men in dreads
as he would have been,
friends of the family,
one by one.
The church fills
with gray winter light,
dissolving faces
like spirits in air;
the color of grief is
the same everywhere.
There is no anger,
no vengeance in sight,
just acceptance,
defeat, despair.
Having retired from teaching English and Communications, first in the US and for many years in Jamaica, Mary Kuck now lives with her family in Massachusetts. She has received a Pushcart Prize Nomination and her poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Hamden Chronicle, SIMUL: Lutheran Voices in Poetry, Caduceus, The Jamaica Observer Bookends, Fire Stick: A Collection of New & Established Caribbean Poets, the Aurorean, Tipton Poetry Journal, Slant and Main St. Rag (both forthcoming), and others.
