"He who has reached the highest degree of
emptiness will be secure in repose."

--A Taoist saying

My dumpy little mother on the undertaker's slab

had a mannequin's grace. From chin to foot

the sheet outlined her, thin and tall. Her face

uptilted, bloodless, smooth, had a long smile. 

Her head rested on a block under her nape,

her neck was long, her hair waved, upswept. But later,

at "the viewing," sunk in the casket in pink tulle,

an expensive present that might spoil, dressed

in Eden's green apron, organdy bonnet on,

she shrank, grew short again, and yellow. Who

put the gold-rimmed glasses on her shut face, who

laid her left hand with the wedding ring on

her stomach that really didn't seem to be there

under the fake lace?



Mother's work before she died was self-purification,

a regimen of near starvation, to be worthy to go 

to Our Father, Whom she confused (or, more aptly, fused)

with our father, in Heaven long since. She believed

in evacuation, an often and fierce purgation,

meant to teach the body to be hollow, that the soul

may wax plump. At the moment of her death, the wind

rushed out from all her pipes at once. Throat and rectum

sang together, a galvanic spasm, hiss of ecstasy.

Then, a flat collapse. Legs and arms flung wide,

like that female Spanish saint slung by the ankles

to a cross, her mouth stayed open in a dark O. So,

her vigorous soul whizzed free. On the undertaker's slab, she

lay youthful, cool, triumphant, with a long smile.