Neighbor by Jerry Durick

 Neighbor

At his funeral, we
filled a whole pew.
“The neighbors,”
I heard someone say.
Family and other friends
made a modest crowd
in a church that size
at that hour, an hour
just a few weeks ago
he would have been out
working on his lawn
picking up this or that
raking, sweeping, making 
his yard, his world a bit
better than he found it.
We, neighbors knew him
that way, a nod, a wave
a joke about whatever
he or we were doing
sometimes a longer visit
little more, in that way
he was there making
our neighborhood, his
world better than 
when he found it.