beverly

By Daniel Caleb Thompson

at this moment across the planet
there are bunches of people waking
teary eyed and remembering
my grandmother and the only thing
that keeps me from falling apart
is my first brush with philosophy
in the twelfth grade with mr. streff’s
"challenge seminar" and what he
told a classful of kids that damned
monday:

he said to us that the best thing
on the planet is to bury your parents
and he walked to the window
because none of us could have known
that the worst thing on the planet
is burying your children.