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By Ivor Griffiths
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The Undertaker's Son
A statue in a tent hides from the sun
peering down a canyons face
it spies spectacles, gold rimmed, glinting, in a heat haze
a rotting dead head inside staring back; gristle,
red stump of a neck, extrudes some spine
and peeling skin is baking slowly.
Unfrozen, clambering, down shale and stones,
I carry a stick, to steady my hand.
Prodding the head a broken lens tinkles,
other is cracked, and gold wires bent.
First time I saw a body was when I were nine,
It was embalmed, the face skin stuck, with special glue.
I wish I had left that head alone,
and packed my tent, wandered home and slept,
erased that picture from my mind; but in my head
the dead head reclines, staring at me, all the time.
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