.PROCESSION ON THE EXPRESSWAY.

First is the flower car with its weight of blooms.
Then, the hearse with its weight of bones, followed
by SUVs, blinkers on and "FUNERAL" in the window.

Imagine, tying up traffic this way on Interstate 55.
You have to ask where they came from, where
they are going? Someone says it's all the same,
caught in traffic and waiting for the dead to pass.

And how they pass, on shock absorbers and springs,
in Cadillacs and caskets of mahogany and chrome.
How light the guess at where it all evaporates.

Does anyone care if he betrayed a friend or if
she aborted her first child? They could have been
in battle to decide who will hold the bowls of dust,
or innocent beyond the graft of words, yet used up.

They keep to the right, where slower traffic follows.
We change lanes and speed ahead, past semis
and workmen's vans. Wonder who it was.

Bob Engler