Burial Underwear.

Clark, Patricia (American poet)

 Saying the words My father died
 for the first time, I felt my face crumple like a creek bed undermined
by rushing water, the giving way almost causing a sob to escape in front
of strangers at the airport ticket counter where gray carpet matched
January skies. I wanted to reach Seattle to hold him one last time but
had missed, by twelve hours, my chance. Later, the funeral
director's face contorted when I asked if could I see my father
before the embalming, the makeup and clothes. You don't want to see
him
     like that
, she said. Mother and I stood together at the closet of his beautiful
suits-- not expensive cashmere jackets but frayed elbows and cuffs, neat
slacks, none recently worn but still fragrant with his skin, underarms,
hair. Together we picked out a pale yellow Oxford shirt, jacket and
pants the rich brown of his hair long ago, forgetting socks, underwear.
Leaning over the casket to kiss him goodbye, I felt the chilly metal box
pillowed inside with silk-- thinking how he lay so distinguished there
either with no underwear or wearing some other man's garment into
the grave. My father once wore handsome boxers, paisley, a small print--
tan, an olive green, and as a young girl I would fold them, pet them
almost, dreaming of days ahead when I would know all the great and
profound mysteries.