The Funeral Sermon

Almost droll

in its assault on magisterial,

my father’s funeral

sermon made me prowl,

—agitated—from bean casserole

to escarole

salad, then taco casserole,

and back all afternoon, in thrall

to Dad’s every growl,

cramped certitude, and corporal

wavering lost to shrill

sacral

cant: The pastoral

story was Dad’s own, though, frail

as it is: faith and God steamroll

death. His wife’s and daughter’s role

was to die—a trial

of faith, not cruel

so much as natural,

when the supernatural

is, as it was for him, literal.

His cloistral

withdrawal, according to the minister’s drawl,

was grace, and his temporal

forfeitures fat collateral

on eternity. It felt surreal

(can there be a funeral

without, now, the word surreal?)

to hear Dad’s stoic control

and loneliness spiral

heavenward on genial praise, real

enough for the general,

one supposes. An orchestral

hymn flared through the stereo’s cloth grill.

Cold waves over the deep water roll,

we sang, some voices shrill,

mine guttural,

my brother’s slow as a crawl—

our voices one and several,

a visceral,

not unmagisterial,

chorale.