Poets Online Archive -Cemetery

A cemetery seems to be a rather grim place and sad prompt, but I find cemeteries preferable to hospitals. I certainly don't spend very much time visiting cemeteries these days but as a youth I made pilgrimages to several poets grave sites in my New Jersey. I visited Stephen Crane buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, Allen Ginsberg at B'Nai Israel Cemetery in Newark, Walt Whitman at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden and William Carlos Williams buried at Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst.

What did I expect to find besides a headstone and grass or flowers? I'm not sure. Perhaps a ghostly presence? Some inspiration? There were no supernatural presences, but I did write about the visits.

In looking for poems for this call for submissions and found many poems about cemeteries. The poet Billy Collins said, "Oh, you're majoring in English? So then you're majoring in death." There is some truth in that humorous line, but the range of approaches to the subject by poets is wide. Not all poems about cemeteries are about death.

In "The Mountain Cemetery" by Edgar Bowers, we find this description:
With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill
The crevices in grave plots’ broken stones.
The bees renew the blossoms they destroy,
While in the burning air the pines rise still,
Commemorating long forgotten biers.
Their roots replace the semblance of these bones...

"Oak Grove Cemetery" by Don Thompson, opens with a bit of hope.
Just enough rain an hour ago
to give the wispy dry grass some hope,
turning it green instantly.

In Key West, the living surround the dead,
who are the best neighbors
silent and agreeable as well-swept porches...
writes Jacqueline Allen Trimble in "Walking Beside the Cemetery, Olivia Street, Key West"

While assembling this prompt, I received word that a poet friend, Madeline Tiger, had died in December. Madeline was the first Dodge Foundation poet I had as an instructor for their poetry workshops for teachers back in the 1980s. She was a gentle soul and a knowledgeable poet and we stayed in touch for decades when she lived nearby in New Jersey. I lost touch with her in this century as she had moved away, but I continued to read her poetry.

A friend posted her poem, "The Mockingbird in May," online with a notice about her passing and so I felt the universe was telling me to use it this month. Jim Haba, who started the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Program and created its biannual poetry festival (and who was my first literature professor at Rutgers) often said that reading a poet's work is a way we keep them alive.

Madeline's poem made me think of "At a Jewish Cemetery in Pittsburgh" by Peter Oresick.
...I set down my son
and he crawls in the dimness,
pulling himself up on the headstone.
How delicately he fingers the marble.
Quickly he rounds its corner. Vanishes.
I’m thinking: grass, stone, quiet–
then babbling from another world.

Another poet, Thomas Lux, taught that what you see in your mind when you hear a word like "cemetery" is not what anyone else sees. We all have personal associations with words based on our experiences and knowledge.

What images does "cemetery" create in your mind? Negative, positive, sad, peaceful, nostalgic, or angry images? Is it a place of death or a peaceful, quiet, green parkland?

In general, people don't visit cemeteries as much as they did a century ago. Being buried in the ground isn't even as common as it once had been. "Tree Cemetery" by Wu Sheng is a poem that addresses alternatives.
Plant a tree in place of a grave
Plant a patch of trees in place of a cemetery
Put a flowerbed around each tree
Lay the ashes of the deceased to rest by the stump

For our March issue, we ask you to write a poem inspired by the word cemetery. Your poem does not have to be set in that location, but it might be a real place that is now only a memory.

Here is Madeline's poem:

The Mockingbird in May

A mockingbird sings near my son's grave
He is out of sight, one of many in the great oak trees,
but the song is intensely clear,

coming through the wind and the leaves.
The evening empties. Nothing here
but rustle and song and gusty breeze.

Unseasonably cold after the hard
rain, Sunday ends with bright sky
to the east, over there where

a woodpecker rattles an undertow.
Another echoes it higher,
louder against a dark tree.

All I know are the sparrows,
the dove call, the mocking,
the low staccato roll, the caw of crows--

the descent, the pebbles placed in a
row on the tombstone to represent
the mourner who came
and those others who didn't come.

I like the way the poet has used birds throughout the poem to signal shifts - the mockingbird, unseen, that is only known by its song, the woodpecker heard as an undertow and echo, and the others in the trees, until our gaze lands on the grave.

EPIGRAPH FOR AN EPITAPH

and not an epigram, in case you are confused.
They asked me what I would like on my grave marker.
Like? I would like not to die and perhaps for the site to be unmarked,
but apparently that is not allowed. There are also laws about dying.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, the epigraph is
"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once," a quote from Charles Lamb.
But I'm not a lawyer. Thank you, God.
"Go tell the Spartans, you who pass us by, that here obedient to their laws we lie"
says an inscription at Thermopylae by Simonides, not that following laws helped.
Thank you, Ares, for not getting me involved.
Keats chose "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
I am making a list:
"The words remain."
"He sang what he saw."
"No more words, only echoes."
"In the end, all is metaphor."
but none feel right,
right now,
perhaps because I don't see Death approaching
not many people see him, though you might hear him say,
"You can stop running now."

Charles Michaels

AFTER THE BURIAL

Back at the house,
my aunt had covered
the mirror above the mantle
where his relics were on display.

Mourners strained to see what isn’t.
Lost in memories —
the essential and the out of place —
their fingertips ran across
the arms of threadbare couches.

The women who knew this kitchen best
continued to speak in hushed, graveside voices
and move hesitantly around each other.

The house was unusually cool,
cool like the earth that each of us
had shovelled back into the pit.

We shared a chilly weariness,
standing by the front door,
winter coats on our arms,
pressing against all of what is
and what is not.

Rob Friedman

RUN

On my morning run through the cemetery,
I nod to Wilson’s plain granite block,
Welles bending angel worn from time,
the black stone mirror for the Thomas family.
It is summer, and the grass is bright green,
flags are there for the veterans and nothing
says Death or sadness today, but on a day
of rain or dead of winter, I take a different route.
I want to believe the Wilsons, Welles, Thomas
and other families understand my detour.
None of us really want to end up here,
which is why I run

Albert J. Reeves

EMMA EAMES, OAK GROVE CEMETERY
“I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.” Psalms 13:6

Her long dead voice, when the computer mouse
Clicked on the aria upon the screen,
Rose from the speakers to my ears, careened
Through the cochlea of time. Laid in a house
By absent hands interred, her shrunken corpse
Lay dreamless underneath a slab of stone,
Two miles away. I listened, and the tones
Evoked for me her image dim and close.

The plot was girdled with a wrought iron fence,
The marble chiseled with a cypress tree
Set in a circle under a verse from Psalms
That spelled her gratitude to ages hence.
The flora stirred with springtime mild and calm.
All times and places were as one to me.

Lee Evans

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A CEMETERY

I’m walking Uppertown Cemetery,
almost lost to public notice now, subsiding
down a forested slope below the church.
Great conifers muffle sound of traffic.
Somewhere below lie Grocery Outlet
and the Dollar store. This is the dead’s
private space – no cemetery of mown lawns
and artificial bouquets. It might have
summoned you, forester, with woodpecker
taps and flights of unseen wings.
But you aren’t buried here. Your ashes
would be flowers in a mountain meadow
amid the living resurrections of nature.

Taylor Graham

THE MODERN GRAVE

It simply won’t do
in this day and age:

a tombstone that merely says
“loving mother”
or “he was magic,”
along with the dates
the deceased touched down
on the world’s runway
and later, took off
for a destination
without an address.

So, my children, take note:
when my time arrives,
forgo the numbers, the epithets,
and even my name.

Just chisel my stone
with a QR code
so passersby
who want to know
my who what when
where how and why

can whip out their phones
and scan the maze
of tiny squares
that will take them online,

where I’ll ever abide.

Susan Spaeth Cherry

NAUGHTON'S QUARTERS

Sometimes when I’m walking
in the cemetery
I steal a few
quarters from Naughton

because I need them
for the parking meters
when I’m driving.
I confide this to a friend

over lunch, adding:
Naughton has plenty
and doesn’t drive anymore anyway,
and it’s not like Naughton’s neighbors

notice. Plus his descendents
keep replenishing them—
it must be some kind of tradition,
like placing stones, or flowers—

and then there’s the tradition
I’m upholding: the grave-
robber’s tradition, the living taking from the dead
what the dead have no need of.

My friend stops chewing.
He looks alarmed, pillaged,
like he just bit down on something hard
and realized it was his own filling.

Put the quarters back, he says.
The dead have need. They have need.

Paul Hostovsky

CEMETERY

Grass leans, bending in the chilly breeze.
Grey sky, moving clouds.
Lake reflects the last few leaves before the end of fall.
Gravestones mark the end of stories.
We are here to end another one.
I watch the little ones, enchanted by the dirt,
clamor for a turn to dump a little bit more on the urn.
Across the plot of land, under the surface,
below the markers, worms and decay work their created purpose—
from dust we came,
to dust we will return.
I pull my coat tighter against the growing cold.
We say goodbye.
But we will be back.
We all will we be back, sometime.
We are coming. Even now.

Iivo Sitterding

GRAVEYARD

I sit here quiet and gravely thoughtful.
It feels so peaceful on the surface
but I know gravity is on the pull,
drawing the dead down below
trying to keep them for itself
in the graveyard.

I don’t think graves want gravity
I think they want to rise up,
taste the joy of lives already lived
which live on still in memories,
and be grave no longer
refusing burial
rejecting gravity
remaining alive
in the glimpses,
of lives passed,
brushing with immortality
as they wait.

Wait
for the worms
to devour them
and bring life back
to the graveyard
of memories

and dreams.

Lynn White

A WALK, TO REMEMBER

Mum’s Care Home, next to the cemetery,
Allows for mawkish pursuits,
like health-giving walks amongst the dead,
And exercises in egocentricity,
As my thoughts turn to mortality, instead.

As I ramble, between these stones,
I search for those I may have known,
Based on dates of their demise
For names remembered from my youth
With feelings, ambivalent and confused!
But, what is poetry, if it tells not the truth?

A boy I knew, some years gone by,
Struck down, it seems, at forty-three:
'We glimpsed you briefly through the trees
But you blew away in the morning breeze.'
This epitaph brings tears to my eyes,
Enough to make me sympathise
- momentarily-
But, ultimately, you see,
It is all about me.

Life is lived, our lives are viewed,
Through the prisms of our own content.
Does each one's death diminish me?
Does ego's dominion ever relent?
For whom am I weeping, if not for me?
A sense of relief, I outlived my friend.
A sense of dread. I will join him there.
In the end.

One day, someone will look down and say,
"I was at school with Johnny B.,
He hasn't lived as long as me!"

John Botterill

MESILASED

There were bees buzzing round my feet
The day we opened the ground
And gently placed you in it.
I remember that much.
Bees on clover
Like any ordinary day.

It wasn't you at all
(Not really)
In that box of cold, hard granite that
could never hold you.

Your bright, warm spirit would never feel at home there.
Which is good
Since this isn't home.

I know you must spend some time looking in on us
Between walks on golden streets
And visits with your mother.

And I think you must have smiled on us that day
We, who tremble and ache with grief.
We, who just don't get it.

Did you and Lulu and Mims and Pips
All stop by together
To watch the silly ones?
Crying during this meantime darkness.
Missing you.

I remember thinking how strange it was
That life went on
For you.
And other people.
And bees.

The blink of an eye
Is longer than I thought.
And longer for him than for me.
Longer still for the old man,
Who leans on a cane and God
since he can't lean on you,
Though he wants to, desperately.

It won't be long now
(What are days and weeks and months and years?)
When I'll watch the bees again.
And you'll watch me
Watching them.
I'll be crying, because I just don't get it.
Crying, because I can't get past
my own missing.

And you'll pause for a moment with us.
(I'm sure you love this spot.)
And then the Delightful Laugh
And the Smiling Eyes
Will dance off hand In hand,
Leaving me with the cane.
And the bees.

Laurie Sitterding

GAZA

Mass graves beneath the rubble
Riddled bodies in the street
Dreams trapped beneath
Bombed out buildings
Hospitals and schools

Dismembered children
Women and old men
And still no end in sight
Despite a fragile respite
In the fighting

Is this genocide disguised
As righteous retribution
Or justified self- preservation
By a people once
All but obliterated?

Opinions vary —
On what or who’s to blame
For the pain inflicted on
The people who have occupied
This tiny strip of land

Why the world has stood by
While so many innocents have died
Allowed the brutal carnage to continue
Watched what was initially a war zone
Transformed into a cemetery
Frank Kelly

WHITE STONES IN THE GRAVEYARD

When I was little, we didn’t call those places cemeteries.
We called them graveyards, like our ancient ancestors’
Shadowy back yards, filled with mossy boulders and bogs—
Where fairies emerged in the moonlight, where toads and
Gnomes lived in the wild roses’ roots and poked the children
With thorns if they intruded on the spirits seeking solitude
In the darkness. Even today, these places remain, hidden
Among the hardwoods near caves, remote and neglected.
My great-grandfather rests in one of these forgotten
Graveyards, somewhere in Arkansas, way out in the country
In a rocky meadow where catalpa beans hang like long fingers
Above the wild blackberries in the hot August sun.
I drove my mother there, long ago, in her eighties and fading,
But somehow, she managed to guide me. She wanted
To stop at a garden shop and buy a bag of white pebbles.
She remembered that the grave of her grandfather, a gritty old
Farmer, was surrounded by small white stones.
It was overgrown and weedy, but we could see the outline—
Little rocks, now dirty, the few that had not been blown away
By tornadoes. I kneeled in the dust and followed the
Dim trail, one at a time placing the clean white pebbles.
A few clover blossoms, also white, lingered in the long
Rectangle where his sunken coffin lay, deep in the homeland
Of field mice, voles and perhaps fairies. He was tall and lanky
In the only old photo I ever saw of him, standing in front of the
Wooden farmhouse he built for my great-grandmother
Who, I was told, had beautiful, curly brown hair. I wondered
About them as I arranged every stone, each one, in my heart,
A precious pearl. Were their spirits entwined here
With the fairies and the old roses, still blooming?
A white butterfly floated by, and I envisioned this grave
In the moonlight, white night moths landing on the pebbles,
A million stars above, fireflies every summer, and delicate
Snowflakes falling on the gleaming stones for eons to come.
Rose Anna Higashi

REFLECTIONS IN A CEMETERY

When I die, send no loud sirens after me,
no wailing ambulance to tell the world
one more life has gone.

Send no flashing lights down shaded
roads to cow the cars in passing, nor
scare the rabbits in the wood

Let me lie in peace: just send a quaint
old car to pick up what remains,
the mortal dust of decades.

Deliver it to that cemetery so far away
where I was born, to sleep with those I
loved in younger days.

Put me in ground that will dissolve so
that which was but moves not can join
the atoms in their dance.

Put me in ground that will dissolve so
that which lived but feels not can join
the stars for which it pined.

Rob Miller

PIED-a-TERRE

The earthly remains
of my grandparents, aunt, uncle and dad
lie in a beautiful historic cemetery
in the same city in which they lived,
loved, died – and laughed
The cemetery boasts tombs of great architecture
and the bones and dust of both famous and infamous
The family plot, like most others
is a simple flat granite slab
Saved for and purchased by my grandpa
a bricklayer, first generation American
and Brooklyn Dodgers fan
Patsy, as he was called kicked off the grand opening in ‘74
Followed by my grandma Jennie six years later
a flapper, prankster and lover of all things sweet and comedic
I can only imagine her take on their sole piece of real estate
Two lower units in highly sought after Brooklyn neighborhood
Move-in ready, gated community in quiet, park-like surroundings
all pets welcomed; references not needed
If you’re here- you’re family
We await (your departure) and arrival
One last thing- did you hear the one about
the chicken crossing the graveyard?
He was trying to get to the other side

Terri J. Guttilla

OLD VILLAGE CEMETERY

Town history scattered in tall brown grass
Forsaken behind rusty iron fences,
Crumbled stones with moss-covered engravings
Now puzzle together founding families.

Once kept pristine for daily visitors
Clad in black, clutching a bouquet
Moistened by salty tears rising up
From emotions inconsolable.
Here they are in the company of others
Sharing grief and loss.

Here they can kneel above their loved one
Here they can lay down the flowers
Here they can speak secrets from the heart
Here soft breezes gently embrace,
Lifting away a bit of pain each day.

It has been this way, here, for centuries.

Leslayann Schecterson

CEMETARY NECKLACE
For My Wife, Carole Jean Warner: 1949-2024 (RIP)

Three tree of life funeral urns
hang from my neck on silver box
chains like wizened coconut husks
that survived time’s fierce flames
finding more comfort, solace and
perpetual peace touching my skin
than resting in hallowed ground.
Tears cascade like eyelid waterfalls
misting, exploding, mimicking
the pent-up passion of high pressure
showers unpredicted by forecasters
unexpected by truant heartthrobs
who never thought twice about
yesterdays or tomorrows while locked
in a present guided by crapshoots where
odds favor widower like myself with nothing
to lose beyond Carole’s treasured ashes
entombed in a trinity of crematory jewelry
her sacred essence encased in vials that presses
against my naked sternum, snuggles with
chest hair, warms my grieving heart gone cold,
blesses me with Carole’s quietus company 24/7.

Sterling Warner

Poets Online Archive

Cemetery March 2025 - Issue #332

Cemetery
March 2025 - Issue #332