Each poetry menu features a selection of 10 poems.
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Cemetery
Surrounded am I on a mountainside
sloping to the sea
By strata upon strata of mazes
twisting, turning, towering
Each level of maze
Has for its walls
Huge towering chest of drawers
A chest of concrete
With drawers of the same
Such a chest fiteth not in a bedroom
And holdeth not thine clothes
For be these drawers of stone narrow and long
Stacked one upon the other
Well over my head they tower
Ladders abound to reach them
What be inside I cannot see
For no handles are provided
Seeth I a picture
a name
two dates
flowers of purples and golds
a candle enshrined in red glass
For these are the days of the dead
So call them they
They falleth but once a year
When the cemeteries they fill
With families in tears
Bearing tokens of life
to give
They bring flowers of reds, yellows, purples and golds
Plants well potted to endure
Candles encased in sunset glass
to deny mother nature’s breath
And what sees I but electric lights
adorning an occasional grave
flowers
candles
lights
and concrete
concrete replaces all grass
How strange so it be
this house of death
Yet what beauty from it radiates
As darkness falls
The slopes come alive
In a multitude of twinkling lights
As do I depart from this hill
How beautiful be your fire
Me thinks that you be a development of houses
Orange electrical candles filling all the windows
at Christmas time
a celebration of life
a mourning of death
How thine twinkling lights doth unite the two
and enlighten the living to death
