Pin Your Regrets to the Earth
This cemetery is a land of giants:
Erudite oaks towering above, cooling the blunt tombs planted in the grass,
markers the size of moon craters,
houses of the dead vast enough to cast shadows down the roiling street,
the sun’s heat, magnified in this place of lost feeling.
Even the heavens appear more encompassing overhead.
Moreover, there are no seeds; the trees grow exactly as they are supposed to,
unrestrained by saplings.
In some places, the wild thorns shroud the graves,
of which there are catacombs, and broken dreams,
like those of living hearts.
Pillars enclose the mausoleums in shadow, bars line their gates;
what would anyone steal from these threadbare dead?
Only wings show the statues to be angels, their faces and arms missing;
how will Jesus heal the lepers without hands?
Workers are killing off the maples one by one with axes
I say spare them, but they won’t stop.
They know that the dead don’t need any shade.
