Winter Light (Boston area cemeteries)-4: Sleepy Hollow in Concord Massachusetts

I hover over a multitude of bodies
buried, decayed (despite the concrete coffins),
“a moldering in the grave.”

How did you die?
Dead dropped by a failed heart?
Slaughtered by another’s hand?
Slit your own throat?

Who missed you?
Your lover of only a few days?
Your mother, father, brother, sister, child?
No one?
Not me.

Your last words?
Sister, why me—and can you spare a dime?
Goddamn, the end.
Heavenward, quickly, to oblivion.
Hello god, I’m home.

I hover over this body, know
it only by its gravestone,
lyrics carved into granite or slate
150 years ago, 1862,
the second year of the Civil War.
150 years from today
I will be dead, you
also and you.

Six generations in a mere three centuries.
A wisp, this short life,
a whisper, and then?

I stand over a multitude of bodies,
a metropolis, a universe.

photos by skip schiel & teeksa photography

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