In a graveyard, a crop of headstones

had sprung up, shiny black;

epitaphs written in white,

with perfect plastic flowers faded by the sun.

The new head markers

stood beside old leaning ones,

gray and pockmarked with age,

that staggered drunkenly, pathetic.

Unkempt, their tributes of long

grasses with bowed heads.

Remembered people, forgotten.

 

Where no graves scared the ground,

beyond a path and under trees,

two girls laid out a picnic

between clumps of Sea Pinks.

The cloth bright in the sun

but no match for the wild flowers.

Boys ran in noisy sport.

The girls chatted on a sea of pink.

 

There the dead communed in joy

with their eternity. Living on in

the carefree shouts and pleasant

moments of happy children.

What better monument could

anyone wish to raise,

than a harvest of living laughter.

 

 

David Garlick, Victoria, May 1996