Jamie Grant: ‘The Rainbow Funeral’

The Rainbow Funeral

We left town under clear sky, heading north.
The highway straddled a broad tidal river
with its islands and oyster farms, pleasure-
boats and rock faces like cloud forms, all worth
stopping for on another day, before
we climbed inland to be flanked by tight-packed
tree plantings that were stacked
dense as hedges. On this day, to be the driver

felt like a privilege, as scenery
glimpsed sideways through the screen was cancelled
by speed. Two hours on the road, then the car
parked on a verge opposite to a country
church. A crowd of strangers stood outside, unsure
of what to say to one another. Faint
music emerged through the door, so we went
in to find a pew. Before the altar, held

up on wheels and smothered in fresh flowers,
the coffin. Inside it, a familiar
form, almost unbearable to think about,
no longer at that kitchen table of ours
reading and spilling his tea, talking out
his latest concern. The sky that was clear
when we entered the church, as bright and clean
as glass, darkened over the camellia

trees that lined the roadside. As the service
progressed there came a tumbling sound
as if the coffin’s occupant had turned
over in his sleep, so some were nervous
that he might be resurrected, and
return to walk among us—but it came
from a thunderstorm outside, and the rain
rushed over the stony consecrated ground.

The wooden box was borne along the aisle
by six strong men. Everyone followed,
and organ music played. The box settled
in the rear of a station wagon while
the crowd looked on in the cloud-mottled
light—and then the vehicle rolled away
behind three priests with their grey
hair and their white robes, walking slowly on the road.

At last we returned to the country road
that had led this way, driving past a file
of trees and farm buildings, crops and bales of hay,
slopes and rivulets. Then suddenly there glowed
above the earth, and above the day,
an ordinary rainbow, as if to stand
for he who had departed. It was there to hand
us back to our ongoing lives in literary style,

as a knowing textual reference, its arc lighting
up the land his written words once imbued
with depth and meaning, the trees
and animals and humans fighting
for survival against the elements. Past milk factories,
pine plantations, dams and inlets,
cars were racing on the highway like bullets,
while cattle waited on fields the rain renewed.

Jamie Grant