Cemetary
Bury me in the graveyard
where tombstones and monuments,
watch over the half buried and forgotten,
in gardens tended and pruned,
sometimes shiny and new,
where angels with stone wings
stand guard over infants
who breathed only a few minutes.
I want to be buried in that graveyard,
not where the sheep are one flock,
like priests, sworn to poverty
and chastity and fidelity,
laid in metered rows.
In truth, we are equal in the end,
Catholic communists we send
ourselves, keeping time in endless lines.
I want to be buried where I shine,
or I don’t,
where there is the remembrance of me,
maybe.
Perhaps scraping mud with fingernails,
from letters they’ve engraved,
you’ll find my name,
kissing cousins to the rain .
I am as wide as the sea,
as big as the clouds,
as heavy as the rain,
as light as the plain
on which we live.
I am a time traveler,
buried in a graveyard
with giant monuments
and flat forgotten souls.
5 thoughts on "Cemetary"
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The last lines of the first stanza…wow!! The whole poem feels so vast and empowering. Well done!
Thank you. It always amazed me to find such monuments.
Cemetery freak here, too. The “Catholic communists” cracked me up!
The image of gates of heaven compared to the rolling hills of stone monoliths and statues of spring grove!
I agree with Ellen – cemeteries certainly stir the imagination.