The Funeral

At the gym, he waved me over, and when I replied
“No, I’m not going” he cocked his liver-spotted head
to the left, mouth, now opening and closing
like a fish wanting back in the pond — as if my
declaration forced him to unstitch the previous
eleven seconds, his pupils dilating, unfocused,
but now fixing on some obligation lurking ten
feet behind my head.

I’m done with funerals.

What duty do I have to someone on the job
for twenty-five years, who wrote only blank pages
of conversation? Colleague? Co-worker? Associate?
Someone who rebuffed all intimacy, as if
children, spouses and beer didn’t exist.

Glancing at a now vacant weight-bench, I tried to reel
him back in — “We weren’t any kind of friends you know,
just two people who worked on the same floor for years.”

Gary D. Grossman
The Beatnik Cowboy
June 22, 2024