Friends, family, six bikers in black leather, seventeen cowboys, old men, old women in perfumed mist, and one crying baby, we gather today to sit in a forced silence that feels like sacks of wheat flour stacked on our chest. We gather to remember how to forget.
Please be silent, except the baby gasping between siren calls.
Now let is bow our heads and pray:
Artificial light. American flag. Antique trike.
Give us a stained-glass lamb in oaken relief.
Give us a long green valley from which we never return.
Ink drawing. Old hat. Eagle feather.
Give us a dove frozen in crooked flight.
Give us a man in flowing white robes strolling low hills.
A life. A loss. All locked.
The end.
--Mitchell Hegman
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