Union Line Cemetery
In a graveyard in Mississippi
Lie the bones of a woman I loved
And those of a man I did not,
Though I am more like him than her.
Down a paved road off the federal highway
Slicing diagonally from Mobile,
The road turns sharply as if
It was meant to dead end.
But as if someone moved the gates
The road bends, goes on precisely south
While the sun goes west away from the graves.
Marble benches wait through the undisturbed dust
For me to stop to pick sand spurs from my dress socks
And prick my fingers and remember I am alive.
While under clumps of low growing weeds,
Neat green grass and bare spots
These dead people rest in a Mississippi summer quiet,
As they do in winter beneath a midnight ice storm.
Dead, yes, they are dead.
But I am alive and they are why I am so.
They keep us, our families, ourselves alive.
I wonder if in a few years when I am dead,
Ashes tossed in the Mississippi,
Will I hold anyone connected or only be dust,
Forever blown about where the delta turns to sea?
~Anthony Watkins
I really like this one, too:
The oaks that line the road
kown it didn't rain yesterday
or the month before,
that there have been summers
when the lake bottom cracked
and a noon sun lit the wheel
of an old toy in the sand
at the bottom of a well.
A woodpecker knocks on the
leaning ash black ants are eatiing
from the inside out.
Dust rises.
A thirty-something blonde in a mail Jeep
reaches out and
the rusted hinge creaks.
Her blue eyes,
Like an oven set on broil,
measure me
from boots to sweat-soaked shirt.
~M. Flynn Ragland
