No Returns

Last fall as I drove down M- Ave. under the yellow and red maples backlit by afternoon sun, I passed a hearse waiting to enter the street from the parking lot of a church. It pulled out behind me, then two blocks later, a different hearse crossed the street in front of me.

"A hearse in front, a hearse behind," I thought, and it sounded so good that I wrote it down on the back of a receipt at the next stoplight. It was an easy lyric to let flit through the air, what with all the sunshine and autumnal color.

I rarely think about death, not even my parents', and I'm not going to now. I'm glad that hearses pass by on our public roads, so I can remember death without having to consider it. But I have kept the receipt.