Sentinels

“Old North Cemetery” by Mary Sarg Murphy

 

I never felt wind
in a graveyard
flowers stand where they died
unscattered and dried
by the merciless
beating rays of the sun
perhaps stillness
is something ordained
by the stones
somber sentries
permitting no airstream
to move through these
wrought-iron precincts
except for the breathy
expulsion of sighs
that accompany whispers
from underneath
mounded green sod
asking “Why?”
then and now
once and over again
but no answer
has ever stirred
motionless mourning
no reason been heard
by the dutiful stones
or the listening bones
lying under their watch

(originally posted November 2013)

Rebirth

“Rebirth 1” – Sculpture by Dylan Guest

 

lie face down
in your coffin
watch the earth
rise and mingle
decayed
flesh with fibers
of ghost songs
that crawl through
deep ears of leal
organic ancestry
elegant compost
of silence and soil

lie face down
in the coffin
see first-hand
that clean wonder of
death become life
different vitelline
livery warming
cold souls
disembodied
now free to attach
to fallopian
tunnels of time

(originally posted December 2013)

Smell the Soil

“Abstract Soldier” by Greg Pitts

 

 

in the corners of soil
squared shoulders cut
into the fit of their fate
corners cut to receive
cornered caskets of
youth who were cut
to believe that the
smell of a man cut
by fear is the smell
of a coward a man
to be cornered and
cut from the ranks
so as not to dilute the
acute smell of duty

Oath

 

“A Very Old Cemetery” by Imre Nagy

 

grief sits a vigil enduring a hard granite
cold graveyard bench through the lonely
repeating of weathering seasons grief
keeps its own counsel keening in silence
surviving on memories sifting the air
for those traces of love promised never
to perish an oath against dying in trust to
the living if only the heart will believe

Graveside

“Mountain Graveyard”
Painting by Kurt Schwitters
From wikiart.org

sleep neath the seasons
mute reversal of heartbeats
keeps grief in the air

Grave Weather

“Sleepy Hollow Graveyard”
Image by kidy-kat
From deviantart.com

rain welters the leaves
courage cries at the feet of granite ghosts
leaden hearts draining sorrow
that softens mute turf
stalling cast-iron wheels of an
empty black catafalque
draped with the damp fade of memory
stones seized with painful cold density
tool-marked and bleeding with questions
these acres of henge
deconstructed resanctified
hiding its answers from mourners
a place where the dead invite dying
no more and no less
than a boneyard a husking place
freed of the guilt borne by souls
it dispatches in swarms
on the backs of sleek blackbirds
winging into the storm

Mortem In Terra

Snowshill Village, The Cotswolds
Photo by David Hughes
From art.co.uk

stone fences laid down
around acres of graves
hemmed precincts
emotional hectares
squared up and arable
open to planting new
seedlings in somber
planned orchardry
monument trees
bearing intimate fruits
fleshed with memories
bitter and sweet
pain of loss sealed in
hard pitted centers
unfit for the eating
but perfectly suited
to hold in the grief
of a desolate hand
not a place to find joy
unless one believes

Black Humor

“Dancing on Graves”
Illustration from manhattaninfidel.com

dance among stones
marking politicians’ graves
morbid amusement

Country Stones

Poesy plus Polemics

ghosts lost of their plumb

erased by soft sighs of time

memory’s orphans

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Vortex

Daily Madness #5 – Dead Flowers”
Computer graphics by Lexical Pixies
From lexicalpixies.com

(75-word microfiction)

She stands alone, pensive and still, despite the unexpectedly cold rain. Steamy wisps of a suddenly disappearing summer rise from the freshly turned earth. A paper cone of mourning flowers limps soggily from her hand.

How does a season change so abruptly? Joy become sorrow? Excited visions of tomorrows displaced by haunting images of yesterdays.

Fate moves with shocking speed. But she remains steadfast in its vortex, fearing any step forward will disconnect memories.