PAD Day 5: Laughing at the Funeral

 Today's dual prompts frm Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "[Noun] in the [Location]," and (2) "write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate."

Sometimes when I get a little stuck trying to come up with something to write about, I visit the Sunday Whirl blog, where they post a weekly word bank of a dozen words for inspiration. (They actually call them "wordles," and have done so since long before the popular daily word game.) I usually try to use all twelve words in a poem, but today I used nine: smitten, nimble, light, panic, flee, startle, silver, north, and margins. Out came this somewhat fictionalized version of a funeral experience. 

 Laughter in Church
 
That drizzly day, with a cold wind from the north,
the church inside was as somber as the sky.
My cousin gave the eulogy for my aunt,
who suffered on the margins of life for weeks.
 
Her mother was fearless, she said, and she told the story
of the evening a bat got in the house. At first
there was panic, her startled girls screaming,
but my aunt took charge, and chased
the nimble little critter with a broom,
swinging at air and occasionally connecting,
not with the bat, but with picture frames and
her good china, some of which shattered on the floor.
"Get out of here, you little punk!" she yelled,
as it frantically fled, seeking refuge from the light,
flying out the window she had opened.
 
We were so smitten with that slapstick story
that we roared with laughter, shedding
a different kind of tear than we had just moments before.
Back in the day, a priest might have frowned
on such behavior during Mass, our hour of grief,
but this one guffawed as loudly as the rest of us.
 
Eventually, we settled down and respectfully
said goodbye, sad but with a residual smile inside,
as we followed the casket through the church door
and under a silver morning sky.