Not everyone will agree
But cemeteries are an interesting place
For a sojourn
Calm and peaceful
Winding paths
Monuments that bear familiar names
No wonder, those same pioneers
Are street names, hills and schools, too
Cracked mausoleums
Paving stones thrown askew
Betray the passage of the years
Battering of the ocean winds
Tidal surges from the other side of the road
Judging from the land’s subsidence
Proximity to the Pacific
Erosion must be underway
Beneath the carefully tended
Topside walkways
Pulling the tumbled bones
Into the locker
Davy Jones’
That is
Granite and marble testaments bear witness
Still, to lives lived
Hinted stories
Inferred drama
Chronicles of chiseled sparseness
Amidst the leafy arches
Of memorial trees
Whose roots have now dug deep
Anchoring the towering canopy
Dappled light falls to the pathways below
And to the graves
Row on row
And the memories they shelter
The faces they keep
In God’s cathedral
By the shore
David Trudel © 2012
