Family Music

The old woman next door, the matriarch

of the family, has died.  I saw her within

an hour of death laid out on the floor of

her large empty house. The Thais die

on the floor as they do everything else. 

She had not recognized nor spoken to anyone

for days.  Her city-family had arrived expecting 

her death and my wife had told me that

“She must die soon.”  She did.

Her death was announced by the arrival

of neon light-poles for two city blocks

in front of our houses and by loud, very loud

music from a boom box so large it had

to be towed by its own car trailer. There

were menacing PA speakers lined across

the top the kind last seen, I expect, at

massive Nazi rallies for Hitler.

I don’t know how to explain this love

of loud music.  Saudia planes always

announce when entering the air space

over Mecca which sets off Hajji’ prayers

in the cabin in the  loudest voices possible

to let Allah know they have come

on a their pilgrimage.  Maybe this is similar

to Thais favoring very loud music.  Dunno.

But I can see my mother if she were still here

putting her chin down and saying,

“Oh, that’s too loud!”  And then when a flute,

or horn hits a sad, flat note shaking her

head and saying, “Oh, that’s not right, Earle.

Can we please leave?”

Traditional Thai funeral music seems to be

something that exists in the world but is

not held close to the heart as it is in the west.

It predates newspapers or media of any kind

and is simply meant to be an announcement.

Its volume is its reach.

FG     7/24/2016

I was prepared to go to the funeral, held at a wat, but Chunky told me that because I have bad knees I wasn’t required to go.  The rural Thais evidently believe that people with bad legs run the risk of having a relapse if they go to a funeral.

My daughter Leanna is a teaching sociologist.  I wonder if this fact might be something a sociologist might be intrigued by.

This in retrospect seems more an essay than a poem.  If you put the two together you’d get a poessy.  That’s what I’ll call it.

My poem The Funeral Band (Jan 2012) is more successful, I think