Urned

A car pulls into a driveway
deep in shadow,
and focus falls sharply
on a tipped beach chair
hard by the rock garden:
a wedge of old man,
powerless to get back in.
He’s right.
Lots of this is funny.

To eschew a gravestone,
to be emptied into an urn, instead.
Then to be planted
between twin scrub pine
beneath a brass plaque
inscribed with his own poem:
he would have said
he had urned it.

To ride a horse,
to shoot a rifle,
to sit a building.
Something to live by.
The garage cameout a bit high.

On his hands and knees,
he dug out of sand
at the west end.
For what?
He told me, but I forgot.
Something about roses.

Rev. Ernst E. Klein (1916-1979)