Where To Begin Poem by Will Thomas

On the steamy summer day
when we buried my father,
I was twenty-two,
dressed in a borrowed three-piece suit,
wearing a reddish-brown beard that had only recently
moved from scraggly
to some degree of respectability

And,
when everyone
(a dozen or so at the most)
had filed from the velvet east room
of the funeral home,

when this devastatingly
(and accusingly) sparse procession
of near-friends and estranged relatives
began moving toward black and polished cars,

I held back a moment,
by the box.

(For what?
To say something?
To find something?)

No matter.

The moment gave way
to the softly smiling mortician
with details and deadlines of his own.

And I walked along the richly carpeted hallway
toward the matters at hand.