Cemetary Walk In November

‘ This is what it is to be complete,
  it is horrible.’
                           -Sylvia Plath


Kicking through leaves
the whitened stones unannounce themselves
to rushing air, quiet, unreckoned,
pandering to a deceased moment
which endlessly repeats its
howling, repentant song.

I am never coming back, it says,
who would, not here, not ever.
Underfoot I notice trampled clothes
and a belt, an opened packet of something,
a whiskey bottle freezes gradually to
the patchy ground.
How unholy, lifes oblivions to
your finality, your unjaded completion.

To be complete, to lie wholly under
a white sheet resting in a
permanent scowl
unremembering its cause or reason
waiting for something more to happen,
something ceremonious.

Laughing children from afar
know not the meaning of this place,
their relation to it, their connection.
Their outcomes are chirping birds yet
cheerfully dropping leaves
among the fixed testaments to
endgames witnesses ---

Black lace flowing,
flags folded,
napkins clenched,
holes in the ground.
Everything is so geometrically perfect
like it knew itself ahead of time,
planned for its occasion.
A black pillbox hat
with netting to keep insects out
as clear vision took in the spectacle.
Men with shoulders bent
praying in mindful questioning.
When will I go, whom will be next,
whom here is the eldest, does it matter?

But you wouldn’t know of any of it now,
at midday, Sun’s corona creating an
oasis of shade under small, deliberately planted trees,
it is a sort of serene elyssium here.

Where are the mourners?
they are on to more important matters,
things, things which clatter,
breaking the silence of unknowing,
the torture of chiseled names, dates,
daily opened and closed gates,
fencing in nothing which matters any longer.
Some sort of underground bunker with an
above ground door looms, almost welcoming.
Is this some sort of threshold between
the living and dead?

Nothing etched here will sway any election,
stretch any boundary lines, move any masses,
kill or birth anything.
Even a worm will not fatten on anything
not already here naturally
and a bird will eat it regardless
long before it is stepped on and crushed
by footsteps infrequent.

Here is a tiny flag flapping over
a plaque in the ground,
grass mounding around it.
There are so many of them,
incalculable and featureless.
Nothing gives them away from a distance.
They sink into a forgotton realm,
a netherworld of dusty, unread life’s volumes,
spines faded, bleached by sun streaming
through a keyhole of spotty illuminations
of floating dust in the back of the worlds mind
where it backfiled these stories
of the goodbyes
waving goodbye.

We give thanks for all we
have overcome in overlooking
what permanent reminders exist,
static and still
unchanging and terminal.

The dead thanks you ---
"Please forget me, I never was set on
anything really, in the end I accepted
this place of nothing, this peace,
your moving on,
what still remains burns you, living one,
not me.  In theory I am free.
You must live with what you think of me
and I must live with nothing but stale air
I cannot even attempt to breathe.
I no longer have to try,
but you must continue to walk forward,
lurching, reaching, gasping headlong
into the fray."

As I turn to go, I freeze white,
face blasted to crystals of ice.
A cold recollecting of a story oft repeated,
told by the bitter wind.

           ......