Across the… by John McAuley

The piper played “Dark Island.”  He stood tall on a small hill in the center of the cemetery.

And my mother wept over the death of a man she’d divorced ten years ago.

When the piper played “Amazing Grace,” it made it all right for everybody else to cry.

I remember the first thing me and my father ever agreed on:  ” Them Beatles know how to do a fucking song,” he’d said.

All the way from Glasgow he brought us.

He built trucks here in Flint. Until some fucker had a gun instead of a knife.

Manslaughter is the charge on the bastard.

I gave my nephew Andy the money to pay the bail.  Then I sent Andy back to Scotland.

Now I have a receipt. And an address. And a knife.