Four Cemetery Stories
1.
Not my first memory of
the grave yard
but my only one with
the pink-cheeked
brown-eyed boy,
- cool spring afternoon
he kissed me,
gave me a camellia
and showed me a quiet calm
within myself,
within his arms
but I pressed that flower
between heavy pages
and we moved on
apart
gone yellow and beige
on the edges,
no pink left.
2.
Easter morning,
another spring
years later,
my brain exploding
in chemical snowstorms
I wandered among those
empty slabs,
heart racing with
induced Joy,
unaware of the gravity,
and gathered blooms
in a torrential downpour
lusting for the feeling
of water on my skin
and crisp leaves in my arms.
3.
Winter
when
other chemicals
and their chaos,
led my to pry
open the dome
of lead
that protected a woman
in endless sleep,
led me to prod at her bony remains,
and to hook a branch
in her eye,
to liberate her
from 75 years
of earthen dark,
to hold her skull up
to the sun and shout,
"Look!
Live!"
4.
And now,
spring again
-- my last spring --
Took my bike out
under heavy sky,
to smoke
in a leafy bower
of oak green going black.
I perched on a cement post
protected from the
sky dropping hints
of a storm
and surrounded by
the arms of trees
and buds of new green,
promises of a new life
among all this dead.
But now I know
that this town
is a grave yard
and there is no
rebirth here,
only rotting and putrefaction,
the way of all flesh,
the final destination
I can never hope to escape.
Spring 1996
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