It takes me fifteen minutes walking fast
But not that far
Three rights, a left, then straight ahead
To Cemetery Yard

It sits upon the corner of
Macarthur and Fleet Streets
I go there every Wednesday
To see ghosts I like to meet

The entry is medieval
With it's gated ironwork bars
And there hasn't been a gatekeeper
For many, many years
So I walk right in and I can have
A conversation with
The Captain Robert Cunningham
Or wife of Mister Smith

And who these dried up people were
Back then God only knows
For their tombstones only have their names
And some don't even show
Yet I speak to them like they’re alive
Or maybe I am dead?
But either way
I'm speaking to them all within my head

Captain Robert Cunningham
Says 'Thanks for coming here
'Cause back in eighteen sixty five
It was the very year
I was in a bluish uniform when under an attack
I was aiming for confederates
When shot straight in the back'

At which time I find I'm lacking
In appropriate reply
Over all the awe that I now feel
About his sacrifice

'Well Captain, not that much has changed
And I can’t really lie
The question is not who we were
But how it was we died'

And the grave of Mrs. Smith
next to him quietly there sits
calling out for my attention,
so attention I do split

And she tells me that one Christmas Eve
while milking in the barn
Two red faced angry Indians
strode in and she was harmed

Though she did whatever she could do
to put up a good fight
They stuck a knife right through her
on that territorial night

'Sara tell me, please, please tell me,
am I right or am I wrong?
Do my children lay beside me,
or did they live on and on? ”

But the courage isn't in me
'cause the tombstone dates don't lie
'Mrs. Smith, it isn’t if we lived,
but how it was we died'

And a couple hours later
When it was time to go back home
And I felt that they were satisfied
With being left alone

I turned around and looking down
I asked them with a sigh
“You have all of the experience…
How is it one should die? ”


Written by Sara Fielder © Feb 2012