Meals on Wheels Mourning Abecedarian

Any old day on the job, our clients may

bite into their last meal, perhaps

choking on the shrimp stir-fry, that final home

delivery, perhaps the driver found them by the

edge of the kitchen door

flip phone in hand.

Grief counselors cannot

heal the loss of a quasi-stranger,

in-between friend, family, customer, patient, vacillating

jolly to desperate in conversations

keeping up appearances, or not, before

loneliness between

meal deliveries settles in.

Numb, I read about the discovery of an

Octopus Garden, largest in the world, nursery in our Bay.

Princess Flower, I see you trying to distract me to

question just how your petals vibrate electric,

regal purple, burn my eyes in cool heat.

Seven Canada geese fly over me in V-formation

trumpeting their traveling song

umbrage to the season’s shift as they

veer south

while pelicans V-fly also, but will remain,

Xenophobes of this coastal home

yonder is neither escape nor

zigzag from the inevitables of life.