Almanac Poetry: Bob Craig’s Funeral
Friedhofseingang (English: The Cemetery Entrance), by Caspar David Friedrich, oil on canvas, 1825. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)
Bob Craig’s Funeral
Organ music softly
crackles through tiny speakers
in this cut-price funeral chapel.
There aren’t many people here
to send off Bob.
Down at the cycling club, Bobby
always made himself useful
as club masseur, fund raiser
and never had it away with anyone’s missus.
But he’d never looked healthy.
Though a teetotaller,
diabetes got him at fifty.
His service was unremarkable,
except when a hulking football star
with a head chiselled out of granite
came to the lectern then said,
“I knew Bob. He was my friend.”
And started to cry.
(Acknowledgements: first published in The Journal (UK), 2018, then in the book, Sacredly Profane, Ginninderra Press, 2020.)
Read more from Kevin Densley HERE
Kevin Densley’s latest poetry collection, Sacredly Profane, is available HERE
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, which was published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
Sad, but evocative KD.
Thanks, DB.
It’s interesting which experiences one has come out (usually employing artistic licence) as poetry. I’ve been to quite a few funerals in my life (alas!) but this was the one that turned into a poem.