On the Day of Your Brother’s Funeral

Saw a man yesterday in a white convertible driving down a country road. No passengers but for three acoustic guitars in the back seat, upright as gravestones. The man's dress shirt rippled in the wind and his arm was propped on the door, crooked at the elbow, as though he were a carefree tour guide showing the instruments around town. “To your right are the college ball fields,” I could imagine him saying, with maybe a few gentle pings as response. “Up ahead we’ve got a great view of Lake Ontario…” A stronger strum replies. As they make their way down Bridge Street, a song develops. The man starts singing, and the guitars improvise their small-town blues. In the cemeteries, even the ghosts of the dead are pleased, and the sky assembles into elegiac cloud banks. Somewhere in the world brothers and sisters say goodbye.

From space, Earth is just a blue ball dipped in glitter.