Old friends

Wet Grass

She looked at her feet and said,

“Will there be grass at the pavilion?”

I looked ahead at the curve of the road

Around the cemetery’s huge rainy field.

I said, “I don’t know, Cliff,” (which was her old name);

“We’ll all proceed in our cars, then we’ll see;

I just don’t know about the grass.”

Her mouth was painted like a face on a cardboard canvas.

Her eyes were black marbles.

“Because,” she said, “I should change out of these,”

and she pointed down at her amber lizard-skin dress shoes.

The funeral, the widow, the old friends holding umbrellas.

And late tonight I’m thinking only about

A confused reincarnation of the old Clifton,

His big swollen feet in girls’ shoes,

The shadows of worry, the ghostly reinvention

Of the way it might have been the first time,

That is, barefoot, in the wet grass.