This poem was visited after visiting my grandmother's grave for the first time after the funeral.

Epitaphs

I went to the cemetery in the town where I was born.

 

One of those bright, brittle days,

sunlight falling sharp on grass and stone,

through changing leaves,

almost

but not quite

warming.

 

The ground was hard under my boots,

not churned to mud the way it was

the last time I was here,

shoulder-to-shoulder

with black-clad, red-eyed relatives,

faces stretched thin by another’s dying.

 

I paced lines of graves,

with their random scattering

of token floral gestures

left by the living

and burnt by frost.

Epitaphs

A few names seemed to mean something

and a few graves stood out more than others:

Irish, Italian,

more ornate and Catholic than the rest.

 

Traffic coughed along the A6,

and I thought about that road,

about how many places of personal significance

and lives of those I’ve known

have been connected by it.

 

Standing by that mute, cold headstone,

smelling earth and lilies

and other people’s grief,

I renew my promise to myself

that I will not be buried here.