Funeral (Of Being Bereft) Poem by Tony Jolley

The funeral was an ‘event’:
Carefully catered and choreographed –
A place for everyone
And every one, most assuredly, in his allotted place.
A forced march of the malingering
Heading for Hamelin rather than heaven.
The Pied Piper of Protocol
Paid from beyond the pale
To make the lifeless limbs of liggers
Dance to a dowager’s dirge.

Now think on this if you will
(and even if you won’t, you ought) :

If life be the ability to choose,
The power to move,
Then who is most lost to life….

·The deceased who pays the piper and still calls the tune?
·Mechanical mourners thoughtlessly following her feet to their own funerals?

OR....

·The one who sees, knows and writes (or reads) yet has not the courage to change and vote with his own feet before he find them pointing, pointlessly, endlessly skywards?

Your call.