I.

Red clay coats black shoes on a previously dry day.

Fresh ground, disturbed earth, new plots—Petrichor.

 

It is easy to get lost in this field of dear landmarks;

precisely placed blocks look much like suburbia.

 

Still the sun shines through brief spring showers.

Laughably relevant to the now, a bitter-sweet sendoff.

 

Ashes are spread before a plated marker, for Her—

Who could not be confined within a box or the mind.

 

                                    II.

Feet shuffle under moonlight, kicking gravel

down a disused road; we shush each other, though

thunderous laughter springs from snickers in the night.

 

Flashlights dance, climbing down to the soft soil below,

headstones, too old to care, stand brown-black—

Fused with shade, as if fighting the light with age:

 

Words written on their face fade into smooth stone

caked with dirt, grime, moss—

 

A band of granite and slate soldiers.

 

In the center, limestone glows,

an obelisk among the rows.

 

                                    III.

We unearth the box of polaroids, not all photos of Her,

Names and dates are written at the top of ivory margins.

 

Memories framed outside of time and context lie scattered

like a paper fan on a wooden dining table, giving credence,

 

needlessly, to the character of the woman known and loved.

Styrofoam cups full of coffee, black pools that reverberate.

 

The table shakes from laughter

and fond stories told into the night.

 

IV.

The heat dies with the sun, bathing curious children

In royal hues, who follow through wrought iron gates.

 

Behind the church awaits that feeling, the excitement

of invading the open but sacred, the hallow on display.

 

The quiet feels like home though others turn aside,

Moved by guilt and superstition, they do not stay,

 

Though the dead never grumble their objections;

 

A few remain until the darkness and calling mothers

Sway the children to leave the sanctuary of epitaphs.

 

Later, the night will bring dreams the scent of clover.

 

V.

 Lafayette Cemetery No.1 arches over a wide, peaceful road.

The garden inside a garden lacks the pageantry of St. Louis.

 

Trees drop their leaves—sway, slick from the dewy morning.

Birds chirp, a breeze stirs that causes limbs and sticks to fall

 

To the grassy earth below; all the rest is silence

Until the living show.

.

This peaceful city—tomb-houses with pitched roofs,

Angels and crosses fixed towards the clear cyan sky—

 

has many paths and alcoves: Dead-end vestibules overtaken

by a compassionate pasture, embracing the faults and cracks.

 

A long white wall of burial vaults stretches like open arms.

All around trees give up their burdens—

 

Branches leaning on sepulcher

like old friends bracing one another.

 

                                    VI.

We play until the sun starts its lazy dip

below the tree line, Delano is all pastels.

She takes us for ice cream and tells us,

“There is one place we must go,”

 

then drives us down the rose lawns,

the gardens of memory. Beside a mound,

 

near a tree, she shows us with pride,

the land She bought, where She’ll reside.

 

Soon, young hearts will weigh heavy

with loss for the first time.

 

                                    VII.

Well-worn hands pull weeds, prune limbs, and trim hedges.

On days where sweat pools under a weathered baseball cap—

A cap color-faded by long days in a sun that wilts the flowers—

 

he sets the vases back up. Time after time, the wind blows

them down, blows away the flowers. He picks them up,

 

carrying them like fathers carry sons. He discards the wilted

flowers—wilted by the same sun that grows the grass,

 

the same that grows the weeds—and fades his cap. He will do

Though his work brings no meaning to life or the living.

 

He will do until they stop bringing flowers—or until the day

he wilts, fades, and is carried like sons carry fathers—or

the wind stops blowing.