Wednesday, June 8, 2011

One Shot Wednesday

 stepping in the graveyard
i realized that
nowhere does the scene change so fast
as the landscape of the dead

three more graves
one at your foot and two above
left me confused about which is yours
since they won't allow tombstones anymore

for ten years its your dear one they say
then some one else will lie in there
seventy in all before
the apocalypse trumpet blows

before i join in
we will come and let words knock on souls
like the rain
sprouting dormant seeds to life

making the green grass and purple lilacs
grow upon the landscape of the dead
fed upon the dry blood  faces and forms
all of them

colors of existence

18 comments :

Brian Miller said...

graveyards have always held an allure to me...i grew up with one in the back yard and many a summer tended the soil between them...and flowers would grow, fed from below...death, life, death, life...

dustus said...

"nowhere does the scene change so fast
as the landscape of the dead"

Very true... new arrivals are always checking in. Especially like the splashes of color at the end of your poem. Nicely done.

Anonymous said...

That's a pretty good poem. Love the opening verse.

Anonymous said...

The seperation between life and death is small...and it is indeed true that:

"nowhere does the scene change so fast
as the landscape of the dead"

only the living would know this...well done!

ivan said...

This is your best poem yet!

Shaista said...

Oh I did love this :) Death is such a reality for me, being in and out of hospital - and then of course, being a poet, one is fascinated by death - so reading poetry in pretty English graveyards is a rather easy way of combining the two. You understand that walk over the souls perfectly.

SHUBHAJIT said...

Death is the reality, yet it is not decomposition but dissolution.

The opening three lines straight hit the deepest core. The landscape of the dead where physical, emotional, metaphysical..all scenes change

lime said...

i find them a serene place. a refuge. perhaps i am strange.

G-Man said...

((((((MONA))))))

Great One Shot

the walking man said...

I feel a sense of loss in the packing and stacking and then the waiting for the color to come.

snowelf said...

This really lingers, Mona!

Like dust in your hair perhaps ;)
I cannot believe the ruckus the weather causes you all over there. Goodness!

--snow

jodi said...

Mona, sad and sweet. I love walking thru cemetaries.

Gary said...

such images.

I would like to write more but need to sit with this one for a bit I suppose.

PeterParis said...

You tell a lot with this wonderful poem!

I like walking around graveyards, thinking aobut the fact that there is something to tell about each single grave..., but I have no intention to occupy a place myself (ashes...).

ivan said...

This touches me.
Death's cold, godawful breath.

In the town of Guanajuato, Mexico, they ran out of space in the graveyard and decided to make room for more recent occupants--but they discovered there was something in the ground that absolutely stopped decomposition of dead bodies.

Anyway, earlier tenants were "evicted" and they kind of lay around the graveyard, some still fully dressed in l9th century garb--and fully preserved.
The natural mummies were soon found and relocated to store fronts and other viewable places as tourists got wind of the Mummies of Guanajato, and came to see them in the thousands.
All over town you can see the mummies some standing upright like old wooden drugstore Indians in the U.S. and some in glass display cases.
I tried to make off with a mummy, but no sooner did I try to move it from its former gravesite, than I swear I heard "Dejalo!"--'Leave me alone' in Spanish. I will never again tamper with what seemed a live mummy...Or could it have been the Mescal I was drinking?

I am somehow still haunted by that experience.
The dead who would not decompose, corrode or wither.
You can see them if you ever visit Guanajuato State in Mexico.

Mona said...

Wow Ivan! That IS really spooky!

I was thinking a different ending to the poem and landed up with just another...you know how it is with creation and whatever it is...

the end to this that I was contemplating was about losing the ownership of the two yards these days
because there is no more land left to accommodate. So even the final home is replaced with 'tenancy' now.

ivan said...

Mona,

In my cups right now this all seems grave.

BTW

Hardly anybody now has access to my site http://www.creativewriting.ca.

If you have a spare moment try clicking onto the highlighting
of my name, above.


Heh. It's lonely at the top. :)

surjit singh said...

Graveyard is only for physical body...nothing else.
God bless.