There was nothing else that they could do

without intruding

and they wanted –  more than that, they needed – to do something.

They had known the boy,

not as well as they knew his father

but known him nonetheless,

in the way men in their forties

grudgingly know teenage boys.

So one of them rolled out a floodlight from his shed

and checked the generator and checked the cables

and waited for the others to arrive.

One brought yellow jackets –  

gaudy, reflective skins of waterproof –

and they manhandled generator and lights into a field at the end of the long drive,

inside the gate of the hanged boy’s house,

and set themselves to traffic management.

All night the mourners came,

all night these men stood in the freezing rain,

directing cars into functioning ranks, making this one thing easier,

this one thing they could do.

And all night the generator hummed

and the traffic came and went

drowning the silence

that had drowned the house that day.