For a long time I was sure
it should be “Jumping Jack Flash,” then
the adagio from Schubert’s C major Quintet,
but right now I want Oscar Peterson’s

“You Look Good to Me.” That’s my request.
Play it at the end of the service,
after my friends have spoken.
I don’t believe I’ll be listening in,

but sitting here I’m imagining
you could be feeling what I’d like to feel—
defiance from the Stones, grief
and resignation with Schubert, but now

Peterson and Ray Brown are making
the moment sound like some kind
of release. Sad enough
at first, but doesn’t it slide into

tapping your feet, then clapping
your hands, maybe standing up
in that shadowy hall in Paris
in the late sixties when this was recorded,

getting up and dancing
as I would not have done,
and being dead, cannot, but might
wish for you, who would then

understand what a poem—or perhaps only
the making of a poem, just that moment
when it starts, when so much
is still possible—

has allowed me to feel.
Happy to be there. Carried away.
~Lawrence Raab “Request” from Visible Signs

The point of a funeral is to be carried away – by words and songs and tears and yes, flowers.

Not just for the soul who has been released from this earth,
but for the rest of us left behind…

We are reminded how short our days are, just as flowers wither;
we do our best cherishing their beauty, then let them pass.

Sometimes acceptance, sometimes sorrow, sometimes anger –
yet on the cusp of something filled with hope and possibility.

It’s enough to carry us away.
It is well with my soul.
And it’s all right now.