There were plenty of flowers at the funeral;
If I knew their names,
It would make a pretty list;
But I only knew her,
The dead girl- hit by the flapping door
Of a semi truck in North Carolina:
Walking with a boy I never saw,
Looking at the man who turns into an owl,
For the last time:
The scents of the open world
Budding on the dangerous highway.
In that room where her family mourned,
They paid by the hour,
And I shook each of their hands;
The drummer wore a pink Mohawk,
And did a good job beating the dirge-
Her face was sewn up like a doll
Whose insides are made of corn:
Something that you or I cannot keep,
But little girls can play with in their time
Only to put away when they grow out of dresses:
And then she was no more,
For the viewing lapsed into the grave:
Once she straddled my leg which pretended
To be a horse taking her to a pomegranate tree;
She made love to two men, as far as I know,
And was a better poet in the spring:
I have not read about where she lies now
Furrowed into the earth,
Though a decade ago, I cheated off her
Sociology test- Somehow I passed,
And she failed and fell into
The silhouette of her name stone.
Robert Rorabeck
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-silhouette-of-her-name-stone/
