Our poem of the week comes to us, via the winter issue of Third Wednesday, all the way from Norway.

                                    Jazz Funeral  

When my grandmother dies,
               the teacher says
    she deserves a Dixieland funeral,
        so my uncle’s klezmer band plays
When the Saints and the local police
stop traffic as we march
                  behind the hearse, high-stepping,
   bopping umbrellas, walking
the oldest member of our group
      back to a New Orleans
 she will never see again.
                           And I wonder what this town thinks.
               Will it ever know
we lived within it,
   that a world began
            and will end
   without a single public word
         nothing more than an obituary
                                      and a little wild music.

     Allen Jones
     Rogaland, Norway