Compass and Clock. David Sanders

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       The Mummy’s Curse

      “We’d settled in to watch The Mummy’s Curse,”

      the pastor at my father’s funeral

      informed us, speaking of his Dublin youth

      and to our fear of everlasting life.

      A silent film projector that his uncle

      owned was set up in the front hall parlor

      where everyone could see. They drew the shade,

      a makeshift screen, which blocked the city lights,

      and waited to be scared. When soon, undead,

      somnambulant, the mummy left its tomb,

      trailing its banners of embalmer’s gauze,

      the room filled with expected gasps and shrieks.

      “But then we heard these otherworldly moans,

      and more with every step the monster took.

      The moans grew loud—a chorus from beyond.”

      They pushed the bravest of them out the door

      and there he saw, like frozen carollers,

      some passersby who, mesmerized in fright

      by what they witnessed played out on the shade,

      shared in the fear of those who watched indoors:

      all scared of what was on the other side.

      “But that was death made animate,” he said,

      “and rightly feared, not any kind of life.”

      That was in Florida, my father’s final home.

      The pastelled friends, whom he had hardly known,

      had come to pay respects. The following day,

      we took him north, to where we used to live.

      Once, since then, I had some business there

      and made a side trip back to tend the grave.

      Recent rains had soaked our family plot,

      a low spot in the village cemetery

      where the marker sat, a small boat moored

      amid a large and motionless flotilla.

      But there would be no rising from the dead.

      I thought of what the pastor had implied,

      and what my brother, later, graveside, said,

      whispering, “Everyone we knew is here.”

      To prove him wrong, I shook the spring chill off

      and stuck a flower in the muck before

      I drove away to look for those I knew

      had staked their claims not far from here and where

      I’d seen them last, when we were all still young

      and on the cusp of things not named or known.

      The maple-lined road I’d driven countless times

      strobed in flickering bands of sun and shadows;