Requiem for the Living

We hide our dead
under verdant lawns
staked with stones
and spires of pine

Where birds may perch
and ply our ear
with strident songs
of insouciant youth

We hide our dead
whom we still guard
but in whose hearts
we're laid long

We say their names
as we drop a bud
mistaking vibrations
for what once was

We hide our dead
under verdant lawns
We hide the dead when
most sorely alive

Burying,
with heartbeats
too like the birds’
but with footsteps
dusting earth,
a child’s plea:

Touch me
Talk to me
Remember me
Love me

------

Like many others, I spent some of my Memorial Day in a cemetery.  I hadn't yet seen my granddad's headstone, so I wanted to do that.  And while I didn't bring a camera (this is an old pic of a different cemetery), I did bring a notebook.  I jotted the main of this poem down while sitting on the grass, thinking of all that was below me, and what remained above.