Processionalia

Out the shaganappi of Colorado Highway 50,

past Damon Runyon Stadium

and the steel-mill lake,

slag-pocket, second home for petulant

boozers, past

the Greenwood Inn's music

still playing into morning to fourteen-

year-old boy-men

slow dancing with divorcées,

past fields of radishes and Italian

farmers as thick as Chevys,

past pink, purple,

robin's-egg-blue slick coats of Mexican shacks

and the goat cheese shop,

its parking lot

full of black cars rumored bigwig Mafiosi's,

past the wrought-iron gates

and heavenly angels

guarding Roselawn Cemetery with marble

swords, past the blue-jeaned

groundskeepers joking

as they put away their shovels, past

all this scholia

to the canopied gathering

and my ten-year-old, acolyte, altar-boy self

giving up cub-reporter

daydreams, home-run daydreams,

but not looking at the bronze casket

he'll get ten bucks for

helping lower and not looking either

at the protandric priest's smooth-shaven jowls

or the blanket of flowers

rising from the lawn like phosphorescent

MARTIN MC GOVERN

anger, but watching, instead, a bee

abandon the tea roses

and circle that black blossom of

the widow's veiled face as if her tears were

pollen and the bee could feather

its legs with grief

and change it-it will never change-into honey.