For Linda

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1. The Viewing 

If only there were daisies here in tin cans. 
These flowers are too nice: ivory-tongued anthurium, 
gladiola mouths holding their long, red O’s 
while Sister Smith whispers, “Aren’t the roses 
something? They’ll open at the cemetery.” 
And she goes on: both legs broken, neck snapped, 
steering wheel right through your ribs. 

The mortician had left them alone, she says. 
He’d handled a Mormon funeral before, in Detroit. 
And your spirit hovered near the three old women 
called to dress you. They felt it 

while they stretched garment strings, pulled 
white nylons over legs pieced together in plastic 
bags. What lifting to fit you into that white 
dress, to tie the apron just right. They’ve patted 
you into place, tidy as the bread you daily baked. 

The sister smooths the robe, fluffs the bow. 
How she must have worked, her fingers coaxing 
yours to an attitude of rest. Tomorrow’s time 
enough for the just to rise; today you’re ready 
for viewing. 

2. The Services 

The meetinghouse fills. Did you know every Jack-
Mormon in Michigan? The bishop tells us you never
uttered a cross word—you could scold him so
he should know the mortician drained blood yesterday.
Already, bigger than life is better than life. 

The family’s here (all but the minister-father
who preached all things pure to the pure in heart
and abused his daughters). Your brother, the first
Mormon among them, bows his head. His wife
never accepted your lack of restraint, but she cries. 

Even your coming into the church was unrestrained.
So evidently pregnant the elders thought you
properly married. And you said yes, the divorce
final, the new marriage made, when your brother
flew in to baptize you. A year later the stake
president called for a long interview. 
Baptized as though bearing the name of the man
in your home and now wanting to go to the temple. 

You called your brother then to explain it all.
How could his wife know that sins, though scarlet,
would be white as snow? Whiter even than the putty
of your face. The freckles never showed so before. 

And then all those babies. Eleven times, yeasty
as the loaves of bread you kneaded. Seven sons
from such risings, the newest seven months old. 

This is not moderate, your going so. 

3. The Dedication 

We do not have enough processional flags.
More people drive to the township cemetery
than are buried there. The maples are still yellow,
but everyone says snow is in the air. 

A Mormon can dedicate a grave in less than three
minutes and leave you to loose soil. I’ll come back
tonight and gather the fat roseblanket, all these
wreaths. But I will not bring daisies. The maples
will be enough. And the wind that testifies a presence
by the space it leaves when passing through.