#171: October 11, 2006

The Hearse Men came the night my father died.
I saw them from the window on the drive:
their wagon black, stained velvet draped its sides,
and two black horses, more dead than alive.

Six men fell out in old coats and top hats,
then scrambled in the house on spider limbs.
Their eyes shone in the moonlight like a cat's.
They took my father's corpse and left with him.

I ran downstairs to see what they had done
and found my father resting in his bed.
He smiled at me, the fever in his cheeks.
My mother clutched her rosary like a nun.
It was the best he'd looked in many weeks.
In less than two hours the man was dead.