From Writer's Almanac

I post a lot of poems on mortality - but I can't help it. Promise. Or as judge says, "prom." Here's another, and most appropriate because it was the grieving process a lot of us went through. Sad, but lovely. Aren't a lot of things? Taken from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

Left Town

by Thomas McGrath

On Monday he died.
A few heard of it and were shocked but not surprised.

On Tuesday
A newspaper noted his passing.

On Wednesday
There was a small service and some people came.

On Friday
They buried or burned him at the beginning of a long weekend.

On Saturday
They went to the beach, doped, drank, fornicated, had a "good
time."

On Sunday
With headaches, a few went to a bar and one remembered a line
of a poem.

He would have understood perfectly the "human condition."

"Left Town" by Thomas McGrath, from Death Song. © Copper Canyon Press, 1991.