Tag Archives: cemetery

Sermons and Seeds

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The dVerse poetry prompt today is all about the pantoum poetry form. As explained by Gina on the dVerse Poetry blog, the pantoum is a series of interwoven quatrains and rhyming couplets. I won’t elaborate further than that (‘cuz I’d just confuse myself), but you can read Gina’s description of the form here.

Below is my attempt at such a poem.

pantoum1

When bored with a sermon of a Sunday morn,

To the graveyard next door I would go.

Among the gravestones I’d play and roam;

Decorum of death I did blithely not know.

 

To the graveyard next door I would go

To escape stale air and the pastor’s drone.

Decorum of death I did blithely not know;

Off I would dance over rotting bones.

 

To escape stale air and the pastor’s drone,

I’d blow dandelion puffballs to free the seeds.

Off they would dance over rotting bones,

Then land between tombstones and weeds.

 

I’d blow dandelion puffballs to free the seeds

Among the gravestones. I’d play and roam,

Then land between tombstones and weeds,

When bored with a sermon of a Sunday morn.

pantoum2

Graveyard by Day

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27c-graveyard

27a-graveyard

27b-graveyard

27d-graveyard

Clatsop Plains Pioneer Cemetery (est. 1846) in Clatsop County, Oregon USA

I grew up playing (respectfully) in this cemetery. It doesn’t look too scary now, but as a child, I had all sorts of imaginings about what might be lurking in the trees, or about stumbling across — or into — a sunken grave, or hearing otherworldly rustlings and voices just behind me.

And while it looks innocent enough by day, you still won’t find me going there after dark.

27e-graveyard

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Graveyard.

Boundaries of the Dead

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Low fences of concrete and iron
in varying degrees of sturdiness or collapse,
delineate gravesites and family plots
of a long-established and
long-neglected pioneer cemetery.

Whether they are meant to keep the living out,
or the spirits in, I’m not sure.
They seem inadequate for either task.

boundary2

As a child I wandered this place of the dead,
on Sundays, after I had escaped the
torturously long church service,
and before my parents finished
drinking burnt coffee and eating stale cookies
and were finally ready to take me home.

boundary1

Ever careful to avoid the mounds and divots
that belied a coffin underneath,
my imagination jumped at the chance
to interpret any slight cold breeze
that made the hanging moss sway, and
any crooked dead branch that
pointed at me like a bony accusatory finger,
as some displaced spirit,
disgruntled at my presence there.

boundary3

Was it disrespectful to enter the gates
of those family plots since I did not
belong to the family?
Was I overstepping the boundaries
of the long-departed when I
stepped over the fences
that parceled out their final resting places?

I guess I won’t find out the rules
for graveyard boundary etiquette
until I depart to my own final resting place.

boundary4

If you come to my gravesite
to pay your respects,
look for a bony tree-branch finger
beckoning you to draw near,
and wait for that cold breath of air to
whisper in your ear.
I will give you the answers
about the boundaries of the dead.
And then I will cross that final boundary,
where long-winded sermons,
burnt coffee, and stale cookies
can haunt me no more.

boundary5

Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries