The Lamps at Wilcoxen Funeral Home

John Robinson

The Lamps at Wilcoxen Funeral Home

Between tall floor lamps those reposed figures of remembrance lie in dreamlike light. Those hardened, heavy-set eyes of friends and relatives in the back room talk through quiet with callous hands, hold cigarettes, drink coffee in somber moods of grim reunion.

Hushed voices fall among peach-fluted glass, their unchanging dark, beveled creases, bulbs that bathe elder faces and tragic youth.

In the churchyard red dirt fell like rock across the cold encasement, deep in earth, fallen soil, heavy as dead thought.

Those lamps of mourning resemble soft shades of fate, the unforgettable scent of carnationsu among whispers that seem so much like prayer.