Cemetery
by Evan Harrison
How should the dead treat their flowers?
With regard for the drifting families?
With phantom hands, perfunctory,
noses bent to grown sweetness?
The wind does not know the names
and does not breathe in the etched dates
deliberately. Like a spilled drink
and nervous surprise the sun has arrived
and it could be Spring—the wind
belies the light and the dead have let go.
Bouquets blow heavily from headstones
and drag through the grass, cross
the highway and bed again
in ditch and empty lot. How the buried
would have coddled the petals,
and how freely the flowers now go, like gaudy
spirits, like wounded things,
like reason flying to pollinate stone.
