May 13: No Time, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Another Sonnet

I have no time this evening to reflect poetically.  My daughter is breathing down my neck.  She wants my laptop.  Plus, I have to get to work on my nature essay.  I've got a little research to do about memory and smell.  (When I post my nature essay, that statement will make sense, I promise.)

But, I have to give Ellen Bryant Voigt some space.

Saint Marty has enough time to type fourteen lines.

from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie:

He planned his own service, the pine box,
the open lid, which hymns, chapter and verse,
who would pray, how long, who'd carry him out.
He wrote it all down in a fair hand,
stroking the shawl around him in his chair,
and gave away his watch, his dog, his house.

Emmett said, he'd have lain down in the grave
except he needed us to tuck him in.

He shaved each day, put on his good wool pants
chosen for the cloth and a little loose
as they lowered in another son-in-law.
Sat by the door, handrolling cigarettes
three at a time, licking down both ends,
and wheezed and coughed and spit in a rusted can.

You tell 'em, Vlad