The Last Benediction
A narrative poem
They came in uniforms —
not priests, not mourners,
but men in orange vests
and steel-toed boots,
sent to perform
The final rites.
Not with flame,
but with a yellow excavator
and a dump truck idling like a hearse.
He was kind —
the young man with the clipboard,
soft-spoken,
apologetic,
said he was sorry,
asked how I was doing.
All the niceties offered
to loved ones
after such a grave loss.
Then he turned his head
to the mechanical priest —
the anointed bulldozer,
ready to devour
all that was
and never shall be forevermore.
He solemnly genuflected
and the claw descended —
ceremonious, reverent —
into the scorched bones
of my home.
No incense,
no hymns,
no Agnus Dei,
only diesel and dust,
each scoop rising skyward,
in consecration,
carrying the ashes
of thirty-eight years
into the waiting mouth
of Tartarus —
a hell reserved
for unforgivable devastation.
And it was unforgivable,
this desecration of the family sanctuary —
where now the sacred and the profane
live side by side
beneath the rubble
of human madness.
It was state-sanctioned and efficient
—a cremation—
The end of matter.
The release of form.
The silence after death
in this city of fallen angels.
Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna.
Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death.
In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be
world without end.