Juniper trees cup the cemetery gate with
their verdant blue-speckled palms.
Grasshopper sentries chirp in the weeds
and the brush sends a whisper: disturbance.

A gravel path forks between rows of stone scripture
erected by heavy hands who beg me, remember
these dates and names, this last desperate breath
between a beating heart and a naked soul,
fumbling and frantic in the face of eternity.

***** plastic flowers shed their petals in the wind,
reassuring bones below that they have not been lost to time.
(Is it really for the dead that we leave the bouquet?
Why speak to the body when the soul has flown?)

I read the name of a man who died before I was born,
someone I could never know, and yet here I stood
pondering his legacy, studying its lines
like a cave-painted ancient code.