There's an old forgotten cemetery
just through the woods we used to pretend was Narnia
when we were young.
Defaced and orphaned, it sleeps.
An early morning fog hovers
lazily atop browning blades of grass.

The headstones not repurposed into gravel and firewood by
bored teens read numbers that speaker much louder
than the names above.
1937-1939.
1943-1944.
1948-1953.

I can see it--
pink, chubby legs stuffed into tiny dress slacks;
soft eyelashes kissed for the last time
before the waves of dirt storm the beach
of a casket much too small to seem real.

*

I wonder if your mother knew
that this place would fade from memory.
That it would dry and shrivel from neglect and indifference.
That you would inspire poetry,
Rowland


*how many baby boomers never bloomed--
their escape from the womb punished too soon
by a God with whom no take backs isn't a rule?