The Cemetery

Today I go to the cemetery
to gaze at the crumbling tombstones,
to sit on a marble bench marked
“in memory to”
a name so worn it can
no longer be read.
First there is the chain-link fence,
a metallic barrier between
me
and the sacred souls that
rest in peace,
here,
beneath my feet.
Then there is the path
of red bricks,
stretching from one gate
to the next,
as if reminding me
not to disturb the dead;
they rest in peace.
There are husbands and wives,
daughters and sons.
There is the infant girl
marked 1906-1907,
and there is the little boy,
two years and fours months old.
There is the husband who
outlived his wife by ten years,
and there is the man
who buried his wife and
his one-year-old daughter
and married again.
Here all souls are made equal;
here there are names and years,
nothing more to identify those
who rest now in peace.
I sit on the marble bench
beneath a dying tree,
watching over the crumbling stones
and letting the wind roll over me.