Cemetery Walk

Cemetery Walk

A single crocus
rises early,
in front of a tombstone
labeled Coy. 

Forsythia spills beyond its row.
I wend my way around
the wild yellow and find
Knickerbockers,
Jewel and C.C, 
both long gone.

There is a family named True,
and one of their daughters
married a Creamer son.
They lie in ground as dark
as coffee, and don’t we all
prefer what’s true 
with a spoon of sugar
or a splash of cream?

There are surprises in a cemetery. 
For example, a woman
named Birdella,
another named Arthusa,
and a man 
with my favorite name of all:  
Horatio Pleasants. 

There is also a pond
and a fountain
and ducks rise up out of the water,
then shake their butts
to dry their feathers,
which gives me a picture
of a sort of heaven,
where we rise like birds
from our earthly bath,
then shimmy our way
to the shining beyond. 

Maybe the angels
wiggle
a welcome. 
This might not be true,

but it’s pleasant. 

Photo by Ravi Singh on Unsplash

The Prompt

There are as many poems in a cemetery as there are bodies buried, trees budding, flowers blooming, bouquets wilting, and ducks wiggling. Which is to say there are a lot of poems, waiting to be penned, within the walls of every graveyard. Of course, that’s also my opinion of every park, garden, house, office, grocery store, you name it. The question isn’t whether there’s content for a poem in this place or that, it’s whether we’re attuned to the ache, the beauty, the absurdity, the suffering, the irony, the harmony, the hilarity that are present in every moment.

I am not always attuned. But a walk in a cemetery has a weird way of bringing me home to myself and home to the strange gift of the present moment. For today’s prompt, I invite you to take find a way to connect—gently—with the fact of your mortality. Take a walk in a cemetery, or take a walk in nature and notice what’s passing away—what’s decomposing or changing from one state to another? Of course, you can also reflect on your mortality from the comfort of your own couch if you prefer. This might feel like a heavy reflection. It might pull grief or fear with it. Go easy. Be gentle with yourself. And as with every prompt, remember that this is an invitation, not an assignment! There’s also this possibility, though: connecting with your mortality might also feel like a reset—a reorienting toward the richness of the present.

There’s no wrong way to feel as you engage with this prompt. That, to me, is the magic of poetry—the way it helps us (or at least helps me) to hold more than one thing and more than one feeling within my finite frame.

I look forward to reading your poems!

P.S. Do you know some lovely soul who writes poetry but has nowhere to share it? Send them our way. The comments threads here are consistently warm and welcoming. I take no credit for that, by the way. It’s all about the other awesome humans inhabiting that space!