Margret Jane in the Parlor

Meg glances at her frilly socks and thinks
again that a funeral home is not a
good place to look behind closed doors.

Small groups of people stand around talking,
politely ignoring the corpse on which tinted
lamps shed a rosy light.

Someone else's ancestor has died and Meg
does not care. She knows that death is
nothing extraordinary because like many
modern children she glances at the front page
of the paper while she eats cold Pop Tarts and
soggy Fruit Loops before being hurried out to
an impatient mini-van driven by someone
else's tired mother.