He Kept Refilling

My cousin is forty-six and just lost his dad

and spent the whole reception on his feet,

the pitcher in his hands, doing the glad

rounds—your glass, her glass, topping off the neat

arrangements of a grief he wouldn't sit

inside. I watched him work the room. His jaw.

The angle of his back when he would split

from someone trying to talk to him. The law

of it: keep moving. Keep the hands full. Stay

useful. Don't accept the folding chair.

The men I grew up watching learned this way

of holding loss—you hold it in the air,

you pour it out for everyone who waits.

You ask if anyone needs anything. It's late.