Alligators

The news reporter said
Venice had never flooded
so badly,
I laughed,
as tourists waded
through the canal-filled city.

They said
things were never that bad.
The kettle won't boil
if you watch,
the world won't burn if
you're vigilant.

I kept the vigil for the
casket, required two days
in the southern heat,
never leaving,
the blessed man with
the failed heart.

Still with bruised constellations
bearing down into my back.
Lemonade sweating,
leaving rings upon the mahogany.

Leftover, crusting cakes
ravaged by flies
and the biddies with 
funeral hats layered
all to kingdom come.

Slapping my wrists
for speaking ill of the dead.
Lying by the piano,
waiting to be played.
As though this one was
ascended above our heads,
hovering as he was wont to do,
in this realm.
In this house.

Wax trailing down the
good silver,
polished for nobody to see,
in honor of closed eyes.
Keeping the hours,
burning at both ends,
my hands twisted with fury.

Owls out in the swamps,
river reeds singing him down the
stream, where he belonged,
within the primeval depths of
his beloved.

Out along the rows of tobacco,
blistering with malcontent,
drought sprang up in his illness,
bedridden with crops his signifier.

Here, on knees, melding to the
whorls in the victorian floorboards,
the plantation home,
of paintings and scorn.

Head hung low in sung prayer,
pearls collecting sweat under
the neckline of kept secrets.

Soft, sweet hymns
to the maker of creation,
daddy, go 
on to hell.