http://mulberryfairy27 Jul 2003

Glad I directed my comments at the narrator, then. I'm working on a poem that tells an amusing true story about an ashes ceremony I was recently invited to witness, see below. Read it in reverse order so it will follow the timeline in a linear fashion, I was trying to make the occassion a mystery and put the poem in reverse order but it didn't work.

Ashes to Ashes

The air smelled of moistened trees, buckshot, and latex
as the crowd walked gingerly back toward the camp,
some ran to avoid further soaking by the rain, or to put the ordeal behind them.

The six rifled gunmen had ultimately been successful,
after multiple failed attempts to get the balloons off the ground, the impatient crowd instructed
“Shoot the bottom one first, it’s heaviest!” while glaring at a too-heavy string of red and white balloons
but the rain came down steadily through the lush maple and birch leaves.
The gunmen had been forced to wait longer than they’d hoped,
each time they aimed, the pedestrians cried out “More are still coming,” “Old people can’t walk so fast!”

Irritation had been rising throughout the trek to the abandoned, overgrown cemetery of the 1800’s
The cemetery belonged to the same church whose foundation we passed along the way
the walls burnt down after the last of the smallpox victims had died,
now its basement’s stone walls stood moss covered, defiantly and proudly intact.
Maybe Industry was on the map back then,
a farming community, not this cluster of unfinished hunting camps with black tarp insufficiently covering leaning plywood structures.

The helium tank had detonated one after another balloon,
startling ashes off cigarettes that hung loosely from observers’ mouths.
Dust gathered on the designated inflators’ socks and shoelaces,
The bangs had drawn a sweaty crowd of spectators around the corner of the house to watch.
They were hastily instructed to scatter the dust around and
particles were thrown around in the bushes and trees, over the house
loam came trickling down the roof, spattering into trays of deviled eggs on the picnic table.

Frank’s finest day,
His plan of a 21 gun salute for family to see off the ashes of his radiated body
into the depths of his beloved hunting camp
a plan a trickster like Frank would appreciate,
his last laugh.