MODERN TRENDS

 It's Meet the Bar and our challenge is hopscotch rhythm and rhyme (much more professionally delineated).  My poem features a modern trend of "visitation"---that paying of respect to the dear departed---in which family meets and greets mourners without the casket of the departed in evidence.    I recently attended one such reception...my first...and here's the tale in rhyme.  Submitted to dVerse, April 22, 2021

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       MODERN TRENDS

The husband of a friend has died

We must go to Joe’s visitation

(I had been told by a friend who knew

It was interment and not cremation.)

We all grow old, but we toddle on

We have to pay our respects

Granted when we fill the room

We’re a bunch of rambling wrecks

The room was filled with people

Remembering the dear departed

We made rounds til we arrived

At the point at which we started.

I had a burning question

But I didn’t dare to ask it

I’d looked around quite carefully

And I hadn’t seen  the casket. 

But we’d said hello and sympathized

Said “Sorry he had to go”

So we bid farewell and went on our way

Wondering…Where the heck was Joe?