« Mark Jackley » FUNERALS Friends, we gathered, softly spilling out of our cars, tumbling toward each other, fruit come home to earth. Fingertips on buttons, of the air but heavy, we cleared our throats and made a small, hopeful noise. Thereafter, as before, going to work each morning, we passed the green, wet fields, filling up with light. OLD PENNY Dropped, perhaps, by a soldier marching to his fate in 1943, and landing in the pocket of a hobo in Fort Wayne, before escaping to St. Cloud, where a thin boy found it, shining in the mist, it is smooth and brown as the graves of all who once had their copper-bright moment in the sun. Mark Jackley is a business writer who lives in the Washington, DC, area. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and his chapbook, “Brevities,” will be published later this year by Ginninderra Press.