cemetery
Trees In The Green
Trees in the Green
A view of the trees
Remembering that they are
life forms jutting out
In cemetery prairies
Also, in parks & parklands
Do the dead dream
Down on forgotten beds
angels in stone
forever watch
those who sleep
in the arms of comfort
of the silent
and the still
of the dreaming worm
Untitled
“how beautiful is the silence of growing things
in a place full of even deader things?
the soft roots of innocent herbs
poke through the rotten flesh
and curl around the dirty bones
of forgotten ancestors
that deserved better than this.” And
all of this underneath the rubber soles
of a young girl’s Sunday shoes,
scuffed white surrounding curled baby toes.
Her world watches as she jumps from rock to rock,
lining the winding road as it leads out.
And she laughs at herself,
dark curls bouncing with her. Again she wonders,
“how blind are the sunken eyes
of those who stopped looking? the flies buzz
and run their tiny feet all over
the stiff, unfeeling organs
of ancient lovers from a different land, different time.
if they could see now, they’d just see rotting wood,
the unsightly view we condemn all our expired kind to-
maybe that’s why they stopped looking, closed their eyes.”
She smiles, and the old breeze
chills her crooked teeth, stirs her Sunday dress,
black and white against her bony knees.
And she tells herself-
“It is just his body that lingers,
falling victim to natural defamation;
his soul floats on to a truer place,
full of grander memories.”
For she cannot afford to think in any other way.
ROSE PLACED
We placed a rose
on the plot today,
where in a week or so,
your boxed ashes will lay.
Strange looking at the grass,
the ground damp from rain,
that fell the previous day;
unreal that this
is where your final
remains will lie,
in the casket,
underground
far from the eye.
It gutted me,
looking there,
the lump in the throat,
the eyes full,
slight wind
in the hedges near by,
wanting to pour out,
get the hurt out there,
pushed off somewhere.
A lonesome rose,
lay on the plot;
all about other stones
and crosses and statues,
names and dates,
words of loss and pain,
other have felt
sometime along the years,
days, hours, ticking quietly
from grave to grave,
flowers placed,
plants in a pot,
and soon you will
lie there in your own
marked plot,
words chiselled
against the black,
but whatever
we have worded there,
can never
bring you back,
dear son,
can never
bring you back.
White stone
white stone as far as i could see,
over the hills and dipping into the valleys,
TAPS played as a soldier's funeral commensed,
i saw between the headstones,
grass and beautiful sky,
i wonder if the soldier ever saw blue sky while in battle.
a uniformed soldier gaurds the bodies and souls of soldiers with no names.
all the graveysrd was quiet,
every hundred mile,
except for TAPS,
gently laying a soldier to rest.
Elderberry, Banana Bandana
ELDER BARRIE
The parson asked
Elder Barrie
to take charge
of the
200 yr old church cemetery
where the elders
were buried
..he knew their
spirits were not there
and let the land
return to elderberries
BANANA BANDANAS
In a sea of ananda
did God make
greenleaf bandanas
for each bunch of
bananas
and thus stitched
bananananda
*
(ananda: over 20,000 year old
Sanskrit word for joy, ecstasy,
bliss)