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Posts Tagged ‘cemetery’

Oh, Thank You

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 2, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
My wonder has a hill in it,
grassy and steep, and a sky
so blue it feels as if I must have
imagined it. There are gravestones
there, some so old and covered
with orange lichen I can’t read the dates,
and other stones engraved with names
of people I love. My wonder has in it
the scent of fallen leaves and the warm
laughter of women, bright yellow feathers,
and a song I once learned from listening to the air.
A candle filled with marigold petals
that stays lit despite the wind
and sometimes a Stellar’s jay flying through.
There is room enough in it for every version
of myself to enter, even the selves
I have yet to meet, even the selves
I might push away, even the selves
I have thought were myself. All of them
slip away. Wandering the hill,
I am certain of little except the fertileness
of not knowing, the necessity for love,
and the gift of being given new eyes.

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Actual Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 28, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
After the rush and the livewire nerves,
after the work and the crush and the stress
and all that is left is two friends hugging,
we go to the deep green grass at the edge
of town where gravestones are made of granite
and cliffs are made of sandstone,
and we all know which will erode first.
 
We lie in the grass beside the grave
and let the earth do all the work
of holding. The aspen leaves
tremble in the wind. It’s a roar,
but still it feels quiet. I am more
cliff than gravestone. Still falling apart.
Which means I am still human enough
 
to feel the afternoon sun on my skin,
how warm, how good. Still human enough
to thrill at how soft the grass is, how clear blue
the sky, how gold the petals of the sunflowers
in the vase beside the gray headstone.
Still human enough to love the scent of summer
as it, too, comes to visit amongst the graves.  

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One in the Cemetery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 2, 2023| 9 Comments »

barefoot in the grass
we sang and read poems
amongst the dead so wildly alive

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True Story

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 16, 2023| 9 Comments »


with enormous thanks to Kristen
 
 
In this story, the grave keeper
is a woman named Kristen.
She plants grass seed
where soils have been disturbed.
She pulls weeds by the roots
instead of poisoning them.
She learns the birthdays of the dead.
When a mother comes to sit
by her child’s tombstone,
the grave keeper gives her space,
but as the mother leaves,
she offers her a quiet smile, a hug.
Kristen knows the name of the child.
In this story, when the mother
leaves the graveyard,
dead flowers in her hands,
she is filled with no less grief,
but there is something generous
alive in her now, too,
soft as the new grass that thrives
around her son’s headstone,
loving as the grave keeper’s voice
when she whispered, Happy Birthday.
When the mother tells this story,
she weeps every time.
It’s not for sorrow
tears slip from her eyes.

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Walking to the Grave

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 20, 2023| 8 Comments »




Now, when I walk
through the cemetery,
I say aloud the names
of the dead as I pass.
Elma. Clara. Brooke. Millie.
Now I know the gift
of saying the name,
how the syllables invite
an honoring of the life.
Rose. Charles. Harry.
There is one gray stone
that simply says brother.
Brother, I say as I pass.
By the time I reach
the marker for my son,
the air is alive with names.
Finn, I say, as I kneel
in the dirt. Finn.
Sometimes, when I pray,
it’s the only word
I know how to say.


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Lone Tree Cemetery, Mid-January

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2023| 10 Comments »


            for Clea
 
 
We can go up there, she said,
nodding to the where the grave marker
was buried beneath feet of snow.
She knew it meant post holing
up over our knees. Uphill.
This, I thought, is true friendship.
So we wallowed through drifts
and laughed as we tripped.
 
And when we arrived at the place
where the ashes of my boy are buried,
I cried. And she did what the living can do—
she held me. She stood with me there
waist deep in snow and held me,
with her two strong arms, she held me.

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What the Silence Said

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 11, 2022| 4 Comments »



What did you want to hear
when you knelt at his grave?

After you spilled your own words
into the afternoon shade,
what did you think you might hear
when you listened?  

By now you know the gift of listening
is greater than the gift of sound.
By now you don’t expect his voice.
You know my voice by heart.

I am not the sound of loss,
but the sound of infinite presence,
which touches equally
the living and the dead.

And I am what holds you as you speak.
I hold you as you say nothing at all.
In your listening, you join me
in the most intimate of conversations.

You rise. Together, we walk to the gate
then through the gate,
and long after you’ve left the grave,
I am with you.

In fact, I am the one thing
that will never leave you.

*

How do we fall in love the world, even when it feels difficult? In this 20-minute poetry reading, I explore this in poetry, followed by a brief conversation and Q & R. Hosted by the wonderful Larry Robinson. If you want info about more monthly poetry readings, AND/OR if you want to be a part of Larry Robinson’s daily poetry list (sharing the poems of others) you can write him and ask to be included at Lrobpoet@sonic.net

Poems from the reading:
Becoming
Cruciferous
The Letter I Never Wrote to Pablo Neruda
Making Breakfast with Dolly
No Slam Dunk, But
Though I Knew Love Before
It Comes Down to This
For the Living
Bioluminescence
You Darkness by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. Robert Bly

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On All Souls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2022| 8 Comments »


In the woods, in the dark
we stood amidst old gravestones,
their engravings mostly scrubbed by time.
And Jon played gong,
Robin played chimes
and Evie played bass recorder.
And Owl read of the wood,
Melissa spoke of good life
and I hummed and played the breath.
We spoke the names
of our beloveds who have left.
Some names were spoken
only in silence.
The half-moon joined our circle,
as if it, too, knew something
of loss. As if it were showing us
that sometimes what appears to be gone
is simply unseen.
We walked home in that half light.

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An Open Thank You Letter to Kristen Who Works at the Cemetery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 24, 2022| 14 Comments »




Her smile was clear sky, was green grass,
was slender stream of waterfall.
Her smile said, You are welcome here.
Her smile said, You are not alone.

She waved to me as I climbed the hill
to sit by the grave of my son and she offered
to water the flowers I’d brought from the garden.
Her offer was pink snapdragon, was orange marigold,
was golden calendula. Her offer said,
There are some things we can do.
Her offer said, I see you.

Thank you, I said. Thank you
 for taking care of this place.
I looked around at the trim lawn,
the lovely, well-cared for space
where we bring our dead.
She shrugged and smiled and said,
We love Finn, and backed away,
her right hand pressed to her heart,
her eyes embracing mine.

There are moments so flooded with tenderness
every wall around our heart collapses
from the beauty of it,
and we are left wet and trembling, like newborns.
There are moments when we are so naked
love enters us completely, shakes us from within
and wrecks us, and there,
in the rubble of our defenses
we fall so deeply in love with life,
with the goodness of people,
we are remade.

When I left, she blew me a kiss.
I caught it. Twelve hours later,
I still cradle that kiss in my hand.

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Choosing a Plot at the Cemetery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 31, 2022| 10 Comments »




We weave through tombstones,
the spring grass soft beneath our feet.
Thick roar of wind charges the valley.
Our paths braid up the hill
as we feel into where we will bury
the ashes and bone matter
of the boy who no longer breathes.

We all quickly agree on a place.
“It’s beautiful,” I say,
and fall into tears,
broken by the reason we’re here
in this stunning graveyard
rung with aspen and waterfalls,
red cliffs and spruce.

I lie on my back where he will be,
my husband beside me,
our daughter nearby,
above us all blue sky and sun.
The earth is cold and hard,
and the spot feels right to my body,
this body that carried him,
this body still learning
how not to hold.

We cry until we don’t.
Until whatever is unbreakable inside us
rises through the brokenness.
We dust the earth off our clothes
and walk arm in arm out the gate
where our lives go on, devastated and whole,
where the boy is missing,
where the boy is as present
as the wind.






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