They appeared by our kitchen window,
some sombrely on foot,
others in more cars, we thought, than were on the island.
At the front, a green van had been repurposed as an adequate hearse.
At the rear, hurried two mopeds and a bike.
Give or take, the whole island was there.
With my hands in the washing-up,
I watched their sad-slow journey down the hill,
an ancient, organic commonality,
to the graveyard by the sea.
Any differences, I fancied, put to one side in the makeshift hearse.
It is right that a funeral should pause our routine tasks
and draw us closer to the living.
Facing death, our minds slide like hobnail boots on scree,
without grip, our thoughts fall through our guts,
air in our lungs expands until we cannot speak
our hearts choke our mouths.
So, lost for words, it is human touch we dumbly seek.
Now, the burial is over, the group divides.
A mother waits while her child picks daisies,
the late arriving youth hurries back to his bike,
cars are started quietly, and, muffled, move slowly up the hill,
and one small group remains silently by the freshly dug earth.
Later that night, we join the wake.
It was in the mourners left the graveside in ones and twos,
now, eased by community, Guiness and sandwiches,
grief no longer displaces words,
and tongues can talk without the taste of death,
the child with the daisies has made of her mother a bed,
draping her with red hair and her best black frock,
muscular arms which that morning had wrangled sheep
now reach out to each other past the slurry of sadness.
Gradually, thoughts in the room turn to days ahead,
cattle to be seen to, and children put to bed.