Private Last Rites for Her Firstborn - Day Four of the April 2017 PAD Challenge

Here is the prompt for day four of the 2017 April PAD Challenge:

Today is our first Tuesday of the month. If this is your first poem-a-day rodeo, then I have a special treat for you today, because I do Two-for-Tuesday prompts for these challenges. You can write to one prompt; write to the other; or try to do both. Totally up to you.

Here are the two prompts for today:

• Write a beginning poem. And, of course, when something begins, it often signals something else ending. Soooo, the other prompt is to…
• Write an ending poem. Poem about something ending.

After the Funeral

Private Last Rites for Her Firstborn

Just past ten, wide-awake as the moon,
fingers, long as tongs, reach inside
the plastic storage bin,
retrieving bits of the cherished life
she watched sink down
into the ground earlier that day.

She cranks the pin, observes the fragile
porcelain ballerina spin to “Clair de Lune.”

***