A tombstone carved by Gershom Barlett, worn American flag, Hanover Center, NHFriday, December 12, 2008
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Table Top Tomb
By Megan Baxter
The grave laid flat like a bed, no warmth from ghostly hip and thigh. All day she slept, and a year later woke remembering only the beginning of the afternoon- rubbing down the hot horses in the barn, heavy with animal scent and the hot hay in the high loft. The curtains grow old and flat in the breeze. Always forgetting, she drinks water lying down, gets wet, needs help changing. If only, if only… She keeps repeating cautions from childhood, always say thank you, never stand behind a horse, don’t touch the woodstove, always circling, had she said thank you? The flat top stone table, no one covers it. A bed for a sleeper, a grave for the dead, a day without conclusion. And heavy the smell of farm animals, and heavy the smell of hay.
The Table Top Tomb
By Megan Baxter
The grave laid flat like a bed, no warmth from ghostly hip and thigh. All day she slept, and a year later woke remembering only the beginning of the afternoon- rubbing down the hot horses in the barn, heavy with animal scent and the hot hay in the high loft. The curtains grow old and flat in the breeze. Always forgetting, she drinks water lying down, gets wet, needs help changing. If only, if only… She keeps repeating cautions from childhood, always say thank you, never stand behind a horse, don’t touch the woodstove, always circling, had she said thank you? The flat top stone table, no one covers it. A bed for a sleeper, a grave for the dead, a day without conclusion. And heavy the smell of farm animals, and heavy the smell of hay.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Fountain
By Megan Baxter
Forth from the fountain, forth from the spring, ringed with cascades like locks, like the hair of a girl. And pouring, still life from the stone, as the winters crack and creak, as the granite folds inward as if, pain doubled the rock, as if the middle no longer mattered and fell away, out of this tomb, fresh water. Always, the fountain in a garden, flowing, in the garden of rose and iris, sweet apple and vine, white lily, red throated tulip, roots deep in your rivers, their lips open. Rainwater runs through the bodies of the buried, like blood, like sweet promises, rushing through the rib bones, filling the eye sockets, brimming. In the reflection of the fountain, the moon is torn to a thousand pieces. The mouth opens, thirsty.
The Fountain
By Megan Baxter
Forth from the fountain, forth from the spring, ringed with cascades like locks, like the hair of a girl. And pouring, still life from the stone, as the winters crack and creak, as the granite folds inward as if, pain doubled the rock, as if the middle no longer mattered and fell away, out of this tomb, fresh water. Always, the fountain in a garden, flowing, in the garden of rose and iris, sweet apple and vine, white lily, red throated tulip, roots deep in your rivers, their lips open. Rainwater runs through the bodies of the buried, like blood, like sweet promises, rushing through the rib bones, filling the eye sockets, brimming. In the reflection of the fountain, the moon is torn to a thousand pieces. The mouth opens, thirsty.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Flower Tombstone
By Megan Baxter
Throat sweet with pollen, petals rotate out from the wheel spokes, fanning the stone. A granite flower for the carbon bones. In the summer, the boys who cut the grass cut the wildflowers too, tear them in the blades of mowers. And no one leaves flowers on this grave anymore, it is old enough to face away from the road, into the tangle of vines and birch. One flower sustains the grief, one flower, like a face, like a heavinly light holds the stone to the death of the body. Was the woman lovely? A flower, a rose, sweet throat and limbs like petals, perfect in symmetry, that sort of designed elegance, the grace of a curved spine, the drooping eyelids and heavy breasts. In the pasture of the dead she grows there, god-like, moving with the wind. Wild Rose, blue Aster, sweet Lily, black-eyed Susan.
The Flower Tombstone
By Megan Baxter
Throat sweet with pollen, petals rotate out from the wheel spokes, fanning the stone. A granite flower for the carbon bones. In the summer, the boys who cut the grass cut the wildflowers too, tear them in the blades of mowers. And no one leaves flowers on this grave anymore, it is old enough to face away from the road, into the tangle of vines and birch. One flower sustains the grief, one flower, like a face, like a heavinly light holds the stone to the death of the body. Was the woman lovely? A flower, a rose, sweet throat and limbs like petals, perfect in symmetry, that sort of designed elegance, the grace of a curved spine, the drooping eyelids and heavy breasts. In the pasture of the dead she grows there, god-like, moving with the wind. Wild Rose, blue Aster, sweet Lily, black-eyed Susan.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The New Stones
By Megan Baxter
The boys look over a piece of equipment- a potato digger; horse drawn, rusted, crumbling under the maple. Totally useless. Are lives like that, or memories, crumbling, born by beasts of the past into a nowhere, drawing up the heavy roots of the earth, turning them in dark bellies, hungry for production, for the meager substance of soil and water and light, clattering, rolling, abandoned. In this graveyard, new stones replace the old, they crumble behind their new counterparts, so clean, a new death so to speak, they stand behind like a shadow, like a haunting, like a terrible doppelganger of all- the corpse, the beauty of bone, the geometry of muscle reduced to ______and it crumbles inward and outward into the still soil, over the grass like reflected light, or, maybe, like blood. In this graveyard the old beats out the new, daily, the dark old stones sing the truth. All that was, is not now. Nothing can fix that; there is no use in trying. They are becoming dirt, lichen, sand dust. Rot, rust, rot heart, crumble bone.
The New Stones
By Megan Baxter
The boys look over a piece of equipment- a potato digger; horse drawn, rusted, crumbling under the maple. Totally useless. Are lives like that, or memories, crumbling, born by beasts of the past into a nowhere, drawing up the heavy roots of the earth, turning them in dark bellies, hungry for production, for the meager substance of soil and water and light, clattering, rolling, abandoned. In this graveyard, new stones replace the old, they crumble behind their new counterparts, so clean, a new death so to speak, they stand behind like a shadow, like a haunting, like a terrible doppelganger of all- the corpse, the beauty of bone, the geometry of muscle reduced to ______and it crumbles inward and outward into the still soil, over the grass like reflected light, or, maybe, like blood. In this graveyard the old beats out the new, daily, the dark old stones sing the truth. All that was, is not now. Nothing can fix that; there is no use in trying. They are becoming dirt, lichen, sand dust. Rot, rust, rot heart, crumble bone.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Reverend Seth Ross
By Megan Baxter
May I offer up a prayer? In the valley of bones blooms the white flower, the bell flower, the fair trumpet of the valley calling out like a siren, calling with the voice of mother, lover, all that now sleep. Bone valley, dry valley, white as December in the mountains, the way the snow lies on the corn stubble, how it folds down the winter wheat like fine linens, how it blankets like a child the hillsides, the flat open land. The dead breath beneath the earth, breath carbon, oxygen, releasing the combined chemical life of the living into the living soil. May this stillness go unbroken, may even the stones crack and fade, for the living remember only those who lived with them, those who loved them and distantly, we are a thus loved. Distantly we are thus living. Delicate strands of life and love and blood twist like a woman’s fine ribbon in the veins of the waking. In the valley of dry bones the bones sing these lines like a mantra, over and over. May I offer up a prayer? Even the hills fall in time. What splits the stone, what cracks the granite marker, what turns the tomb to topsoil, what turns the bones to dust is greater than God, God grant me forgiveness. In time, in time, in time, the world turns around again. Stilly, the valley lies, resting.
Reverend Seth Ross
By Megan Baxter
May I offer up a prayer? In the valley of bones blooms the white flower, the bell flower, the fair trumpet of the valley calling out like a siren, calling with the voice of mother, lover, all that now sleep. Bone valley, dry valley, white as December in the mountains, the way the snow lies on the corn stubble, how it folds down the winter wheat like fine linens, how it blankets like a child the hillsides, the flat open land. The dead breath beneath the earth, breath carbon, oxygen, releasing the combined chemical life of the living into the living soil. May this stillness go unbroken, may even the stones crack and fade, for the living remember only those who lived with them, those who loved them and distantly, we are a thus loved. Distantly we are thus living. Delicate strands of life and love and blood twist like a woman’s fine ribbon in the veins of the waking. In the valley of dry bones the bones sing these lines like a mantra, over and over. May I offer up a prayer? Even the hills fall in time. What splits the stone, what cracks the granite marker, what turns the tomb to topsoil, what turns the bones to dust is greater than God, God grant me forgiveness. In time, in time, in time, the world turns around again. Stilly, the valley lies, resting.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
John Willey & Martha Moulton, One Grave Marker
By Megan Baxter
In the farmhouse: the old iron bed, the smell of lye, the worn cloths of a life of work, the copper tub, the woodstove blackened, the slick rope, the seasoned pans, the old rifle, the worn knitting needles, the ancient apple trees, the lilacs reaching up to the second story, the smell of cattle and milk and lard, butter and wild blood, the taste of metal and hide and wool, taste of hay dust, taste of manure and burlap and…Love.
At 91 she did to rise to the days work. His fingers cracked and buckled. He woke often, reaching for her body. In June he dreamed of the days of berry picking with the children, the girls in their bonnets, the boys tossing the fruit, Martha in her work dress and white apron, breasts heavy with milk, face flushed in the heat of early summer, and dreaming, reaching for her good jam as if to eat the last supper, died.
A granddaughter picked a handful of lilacs from the second story window and placed them on the single grave.
John Willey & Martha Moulton, One Grave Marker
By Megan Baxter
In the farmhouse: the old iron bed, the smell of lye, the worn cloths of a life of work, the copper tub, the woodstove blackened, the slick rope, the seasoned pans, the old rifle, the worn knitting needles, the ancient apple trees, the lilacs reaching up to the second story, the smell of cattle and milk and lard, butter and wild blood, the taste of metal and hide and wool, taste of hay dust, taste of manure and burlap and…Love.
At 91 she did to rise to the days work. His fingers cracked and buckled. He woke often, reaching for her body. In June he dreamed of the days of berry picking with the children, the girls in their bonnets, the boys tossing the fruit, Martha in her work dress and white apron, breasts heavy with milk, face flushed in the heat of early summer, and dreaming, reaching for her good jam as if to eat the last supper, died.
A granddaughter picked a handful of lilacs from the second story window and placed them on the single grave.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Many, Simple Graves
By Megan Baxter
Like the teeth of each graveyard, whitened, crocked, some sunk back beneath the earth. And this is the greatest sadness, that feeling of walking on eggshells, on the small, smallest graves of children. Maybe they really had no name, not even an hour to call their own in stone, so all that stands for nine months warm growing, and hope, and loss, is a marker no larger than a man’s hand, open, empty. The many simple graves crowd out the rest. There are no stories under ground here, the story is the grief that lingered with the living, the milk heavy in the breast, the blood of labor, the struggle to reproduce.
The Many, Simple Graves
By Megan Baxter
Like the teeth of each graveyard, whitened, crocked, some sunk back beneath the earth. And this is the greatest sadness, that feeling of walking on eggshells, on the small, smallest graves of children. Maybe they really had no name, not even an hour to call their own in stone, so all that stands for nine months warm growing, and hope, and loss, is a marker no larger than a man’s hand, open, empty. The many simple graves crowd out the rest. There are no stories under ground here, the story is the grief that lingered with the living, the milk heavy in the breast, the blood of labor, the struggle to reproduce.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The White Tombstone, “Rosa”
By Megan Baxter
Rosa not of roses but of lilies in the valley, ringing in the silence there, pearls on a string, the taste of powdered milk and aspirin, eggplant flesh and your ankles, in the field at night when you held a mirror to the moon and asked for a sight of the future and, gasping, handing it off to a sister or a friend, thought ‘love looks like that?’ and you wished that all you had seen there was the moon and the whole reflected world and your own, almost beautiful face like a saucer of cream, tenderly shaking in the hand. The hollow where the garden flowers spread and became wild, there you read about God from a small, white book, how rising from the dead the Son had met his women friends, those who cared for bodies bandaged or naked, kissed the cold brows of saints. Your bones blanch like bellflowers, crumbling gracefully into each other.
The White Tombstone, “Rosa”
By Megan Baxter
Rosa not of roses but of lilies in the valley, ringing in the silence there, pearls on a string, the taste of powdered milk and aspirin, eggplant flesh and your ankles, in the field at night when you held a mirror to the moon and asked for a sight of the future and, gasping, handing it off to a sister or a friend, thought ‘love looks like that?’ and you wished that all you had seen there was the moon and the whole reflected world and your own, almost beautiful face like a saucer of cream, tenderly shaking in the hand. The hollow where the garden flowers spread and became wild, there you read about God from a small, white book, how rising from the dead the Son had met his women friends, those who cared for bodies bandaged or naked, kissed the cold brows of saints. Your bones blanch like bellflowers, crumbling gracefully into each other.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Mother
By Megan Baxter
A white tombstone inscribed ‘Mother’ and below, a metal box, fastened to the stone.
I leave to you the ashes from the hearth, they are still warm to the touch, glowing. I leave you the charged particles of wool dust, from the spinning wheel, they crackle against each other. I leave the clipping of all your hair, from your first haircuts, it is so fine and fair. And the tooth of my favorite barn cat, and a feather of particular brilliance, and blue eggshells that I found once, when I was a girl and have kept all these years. In this box: the smell of milk, the sound of kneading bread, the shine of my best, Sunday shoes, a love letter written to me when I was your age by a man who would not become my husband. In this box, a heart like the witch wants in the fairy story, bleeding, moving as if it still was needed, and the heart beats out, mother, mother, mother. It has forgotten my true name.
The charged box draws lightening. Blackens the stone. Crackles with electricity, charged it smells like burnt wool and ash. The grass grows oddly, in a pattern like veins, brown and green, dead, alive. It is not second life. Her bones roll outwards, spread into the graves of others. Today, I am scared away by a family of killdeers. Their eggs, speckled blue, rest up against the stone, a collection of jewels, a hatch of mushrooms. I had wanted to touch the box, to feel its chill or reflected heat, against my palm, feel the metal in my life lines, in my love lines, in my heart lines. It is polished, nearly translucent with age. Inside, I see a womb and the makings of life, rust red, mammalian.
Mother
By Megan Baxter
A white tombstone inscribed ‘Mother’ and below, a metal box, fastened to the stone.
I leave to you the ashes from the hearth, they are still warm to the touch, glowing. I leave you the charged particles of wool dust, from the spinning wheel, they crackle against each other. I leave the clipping of all your hair, from your first haircuts, it is so fine and fair. And the tooth of my favorite barn cat, and a feather of particular brilliance, and blue eggshells that I found once, when I was a girl and have kept all these years. In this box: the smell of milk, the sound of kneading bread, the shine of my best, Sunday shoes, a love letter written to me when I was your age by a man who would not become my husband. In this box, a heart like the witch wants in the fairy story, bleeding, moving as if it still was needed, and the heart beats out, mother, mother, mother. It has forgotten my true name.
The charged box draws lightening. Blackens the stone. Crackles with electricity, charged it smells like burnt wool and ash. The grass grows oddly, in a pattern like veins, brown and green, dead, alive. It is not second life. Her bones roll outwards, spread into the graves of others. Today, I am scared away by a family of killdeers. Their eggs, speckled blue, rest up against the stone, a collection of jewels, a hatch of mushrooms. I had wanted to touch the box, to feel its chill or reflected heat, against my palm, feel the metal in my life lines, in my love lines, in my heart lines. It is polished, nearly translucent with age. Inside, I see a womb and the makings of life, rust red, mammalian.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Mother
By Megan Baxter
A white tombstone inscribed ‘Mother’ and below, a metal box, fastened to the stone.
I leave to you the ashes from the hearth, they are still warm to the touch, glowing. I leave you the charged particles of wool dust, from the spinning wheel, they crackle against each other. I leave the clipping of all your hair, from your first haircuts, it is so fine and fair. And the tooth of my favorite barn cat, and a feather of particular brilliance, and blue eggshells that I found once, when I was a girl and have kept all these years. In this box: the smell of milk, the sound of kneading bread, the shine of my best, Sunday shoes, a love letter written to me when I was your age by a man who would not become my husband. In this box, a heart like the witch wants in the fairy story, bleeding, moving as if it still was needed, and the heart beats out, mother, mother, mother. It has forgotten my true name.
The charged box draws lightening. Blackens the stone. Crackles with electricity, charged it smells like burnt wool and ash. The grass grows oddly, in a pattern like veins, brown and green, dead, alive. It is not second life. Her bones roll outwards, spread into the graves of others. Today, I am scared away by a family of killdeers. Their eggs, speckled blue, rest up against the stone, a collection of jewels, a hatch of mushrooms. I had wanted to touch the box, to feel its chill or reflected heat, against my palm, feel the metal in my life lines, in my love lines, in my heart lines. It is polished, nearly translucent with age. Inside, I see a womb and the makings of life, rust red, mammalian.
Mother
By Megan Baxter
A white tombstone inscribed ‘Mother’ and below, a metal box, fastened to the stone.
I leave to you the ashes from the hearth, they are still warm to the touch, glowing. I leave you the charged particles of wool dust, from the spinning wheel, they crackle against each other. I leave the clipping of all your hair, from your first haircuts, it is so fine and fair. And the tooth of my favorite barn cat, and a feather of particular brilliance, and blue eggshells that I found once, when I was a girl and have kept all these years. In this box: the smell of milk, the sound of kneading bread, the shine of my best, Sunday shoes, a love letter written to me when I was your age by a man who would not become my husband. In this box, a heart like the witch wants in the fairy story, bleeding, moving as if it still was needed, and the heart beats out, mother, mother, mother. It has forgotten my true name.
The charged box draws lightening. Blackens the stone. Crackles with electricity, charged it smells like burnt wool and ash. The grass grows oddly, in a pattern like veins, brown and green, dead, alive. It is not second life. Her bones roll outwards, spread into the graves of others. Today, I am scared away by a family of killdeers. Their eggs, speckled blue, rest up against the stone, a collection of jewels, a hatch of mushrooms. I had wanted to touch the box, to feel its chill or reflected heat, against my palm, feel the metal in my life lines, in my love lines, in my heart lines. It is polished, nearly translucent with age. Inside, I see a womb and the makings of life, rust red, mammalian.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
A Love story in a Graveyard
By Megan Baxter
Here, the bent stones bow inward, to a family tomb marker, bigger than the rest, too solid to yield to gravity or time. All carved by one hand. All chipped from the same query. I like to sit in the middle of their prayer circle and dream of their town, of my town before it was as I know it. The silence there is beautiful. Listen to the ice shift in the reeds and the snow settle in the forest, and the metallic, falling sleet. When your bones become soil you become soil and the soil becomes you. It is that simple. In the winter the silence is more welcome, a sort of rest from the buzzing of summer, the crackling of fall, the scream that is spring. The long sight of death carries down valley. Living, we look together down river.
A Love story in a Graveyard
By Megan Baxter
Here, the bent stones bow inward, to a family tomb marker, bigger than the rest, too solid to yield to gravity or time. All carved by one hand. All chipped from the same query. I like to sit in the middle of their prayer circle and dream of their town, of my town before it was as I know it. The silence there is beautiful. Listen to the ice shift in the reeds and the snow settle in the forest, and the metallic, falling sleet. When your bones become soil you become soil and the soil becomes you. It is that simple. In the winter the silence is more welcome, a sort of rest from the buzzing of summer, the crackling of fall, the scream that is spring. The long sight of death carries down valley. Living, we look together down river.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Daniel
By Megan Baxter
Daniel
By Megan Baxter
‘Our Precious Son Daniel, Age 1 Day, 1883’. White marble. The sun blinds against it. No memory. No memory, the fast division of cells, the slow growth, rotation like a planet, the heart and blood shared, the movement within. A lilac near by, I can smell it. One day. One day without the capacity to remember it. White marble. Too large, too grand for a child’s grave marker. Who did they dream of you becoming, small, curled body, curled around lilac roots, rooted in lilac roots?
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Burrow
By Megan Baxter
What navigates between the emptiness of bone and bone? What calls the chest cavity, the hollow skull home? It is, in a sense, a second life, born again from this still grave. The world in all its seasons crawls into you again. Smaller though, shorter lived. Flat against the tombstone, generations travel down the familiar passage, through topsoil, sand, by the strong beam of femur and arm bone, the empty eyes of old hips. Would you call them your children? Would you call this desecration? Or is this what you wished for, to be made again of what you are made of, to be useful to the coming futures, to be, in this last act, helpful? How many lives have been born into your body, the small, countless deliveries, the swarm rising, running loose in the graveyard, forced to find a more imperfect home. To be home is to be like love, a return when, taking off the coat against the wind, loosening the hair, warming the hands near the woodstove, you feel, wholly alive again, entirely human and by that order, animal. The long afternoon shadows cast deep black the entrance of their burrow.
The Burrow
By Megan Baxter
What navigates between the emptiness of bone and bone? What calls the chest cavity, the hollow skull home? It is, in a sense, a second life, born again from this still grave. The world in all its seasons crawls into you again. Smaller though, shorter lived. Flat against the tombstone, generations travel down the familiar passage, through topsoil, sand, by the strong beam of femur and arm bone, the empty eyes of old hips. Would you call them your children? Would you call this desecration? Or is this what you wished for, to be made again of what you are made of, to be useful to the coming futures, to be, in this last act, helpful? How many lives have been born into your body, the small, countless deliveries, the swarm rising, running loose in the graveyard, forced to find a more imperfect home. To be home is to be like love, a return when, taking off the coat against the wind, loosening the hair, warming the hands near the woodstove, you feel, wholly alive again, entirely human and by that order, animal. The long afternoon shadows cast deep black the entrance of their burrow.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Blank, in the shade
By Megan Baxter
He was buried as far from the others as possible, tipping down the bank, in the roots of two sugar maples. Blank. Peter kneels down, trying to read what was never written there. What would warrant this exile in death? Seeing him there I am almost afraid, want to pull him back, show him the view down the valley and then I realize- that is where he wanted to lie, in the quiet corner that looks onto itself. His name was loved by those who spoke it with love, why now, why not this sleep. There is a certain grave grace in disappearing, of shrugging off that last chance of fame. The stone now reads:
“Died humbly, remembered by those who knew my hands, my lips, by the land that I worked and that worked me. Look below there, see the stone wall, the careful row of oaks, maybe that was me, or my son or a kind. If I were you, I’d go back, walk away, forget this place. The dandelions are lighting up the fields today, tend to the hay and the trout hatchlings, love, work, that’s all you need right now.”
Blank, in the shade
By Megan Baxter
He was buried as far from the others as possible, tipping down the bank, in the roots of two sugar maples. Blank. Peter kneels down, trying to read what was never written there. What would warrant this exile in death? Seeing him there I am almost afraid, want to pull him back, show him the view down the valley and then I realize- that is where he wanted to lie, in the quiet corner that looks onto itself. His name was loved by those who spoke it with love, why now, why not this sleep. There is a certain grave grace in disappearing, of shrugging off that last chance of fame. The stone now reads:
“Died humbly, remembered by those who knew my hands, my lips, by the land that I worked and that worked me. Look below there, see the stone wall, the careful row of oaks, maybe that was me, or my son or a kind. If I were you, I’d go back, walk away, forget this place. The dandelions are lighting up the fields today, tend to the hay and the trout hatchlings, love, work, that’s all you need right now.”
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Gershom Barlett, Tombstone Carver
By Megan Baxter
The hook and eye man, the round nose and wide skull face, down turned mouth and raised eyebrow, the vestigial row of teeth, the four-lobed crown, the three wings curling around pinwheels, around clovers, around a heart. The hook and eye man, man of granite and slate, illustrator of unknowing, knowing the way the body leaves us, slowing, hardening in the winters, the root of spine, the tendril musculature, the permanent, hard etched bone body. A fleshly skull, an artist’s eyes, the lasting long arch of art upon the landscape. This vision: in death we are no way like life, the world curls around us, we are kings and angels, the trumpet flowers call from the valley of bones and the high strange birds sing to us in King James English remembering the lay of a life. The slate gives way, Gershom Barlett, even time evens the slate. Yields to new palettes, to new hands and tools, the swoop of a dove, or the swoon of an angel. The hook and eye man, a needle through a rich man, a needle through a needle, a life in a stone.
Gershom Barlett, Tombstone Carver
By Megan Baxter
The hook and eye man, the round nose and wide skull face, down turned mouth and raised eyebrow, the vestigial row of teeth, the four-lobed crown, the three wings curling around pinwheels, around clovers, around a heart. The hook and eye man, man of granite and slate, illustrator of unknowing, knowing the way the body leaves us, slowing, hardening in the winters, the root of spine, the tendril musculature, the permanent, hard etched bone body. A fleshly skull, an artist’s eyes, the lasting long arch of art upon the landscape. This vision: in death we are no way like life, the world curls around us, we are kings and angels, the trumpet flowers call from the valley of bones and the high strange birds sing to us in King James English remembering the lay of a life. The slate gives way, Gershom Barlett, even time evens the slate. Yields to new palettes, to new hands and tools, the swoop of a dove, or the swoon of an angel. The hook and eye man, a needle through a rich man, a needle through a needle, a life in a stone.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Flags of Veterans
By Megan Baxter
In the cold wind of December, the weak light of winter, the flags snap and tear. Bleached, the white stripes are translucent, like skin. Through them, more stones, the white fence, the slick road. In the spring, the Boy Scouts scatter in the graveyard, collecting the old flags that cling like memories to their. All together, they solemnly burn the bundles of stars and colors, one at a time, the flames leaping up over the fabric, the hungry, wooden stake. I’ve never seen what they do with the ashes. The young faces watch with grave interest as the flags go up in flames. You can tell their favorite part of the day is the run, the scattering amongst the stones. It is like a hunt for eggs, this search for the old flags. In December I dream of the sleeping men who met here, before the square-white church two hundred years ago. The arms of farmers, the hands of sheep men, deer hunters, dairy boys. And a bugle to keep order, as the men shuffled, shifting like neighbors at a church supper. It all seems very distant, revolution, civil war. But the men gathered, anxious for the march south, on Muster Square and I imagine it is June, and brilliant, and the church stands like a white cliff and the graveyard like broken teeth, like an open mouth, rasping, and to the north, the hills green with the new leaves, and the hay field has been cut for the first time and smells fresh and young. Oh beautiful bodies, the muscle of a life of work, the hard hands and thick forearms. Bullet through body, musket ball through muscle mass, the march through cold and heat. The little Boy Scouts fidget in their uniforms. There are many flags to burn. The ceremony drags on into the rain.
The Flags of Veterans
By Megan Baxter
In the cold wind of December, the weak light of winter, the flags snap and tear. Bleached, the white stripes are translucent, like skin. Through them, more stones, the white fence, the slick road. In the spring, the Boy Scouts scatter in the graveyard, collecting the old flags that cling like memories to their. All together, they solemnly burn the bundles of stars and colors, one at a time, the flames leaping up over the fabric, the hungry, wooden stake. I’ve never seen what they do with the ashes. The young faces watch with grave interest as the flags go up in flames. You can tell their favorite part of the day is the run, the scattering amongst the stones. It is like a hunt for eggs, this search for the old flags. In December I dream of the sleeping men who met here, before the square-white church two hundred years ago. The arms of farmers, the hands of sheep men, deer hunters, dairy boys. And a bugle to keep order, as the men shuffled, shifting like neighbors at a church supper. It all seems very distant, revolution, civil war. But the men gathered, anxious for the march south, on Muster Square and I imagine it is June, and brilliant, and the church stands like a white cliff and the graveyard like broken teeth, like an open mouth, rasping, and to the north, the hills green with the new leaves, and the hay field has been cut for the first time and smells fresh and young. Oh beautiful bodies, the muscle of a life of work, the hard hands and thick forearms. Bullet through body, musket ball through muscle mass, the march through cold and heat. The little Boy Scouts fidget in their uniforms. There are many flags to burn. The ceremony drags on into the rain.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Elizabeth Howes, Wife of Wallace Fuller Age 22
By Megan Baxter
The young wife opens the door. It is early afternoon. She sets up scrubbing and washing, throwing the dirty water out the back window into the flowers there. In her hair, red ribbons. She can see the hay wagon and the men tossing up forkloads, hay dust catching the light of the low sun. The young wife lights the stove, one hand over the burner, waiting to feel its heat. She is pleased, in the sort of way she had prayed for, to see their clothing hanging together on the line, touching in the breeze as if even her dresses longed for his trousers. In the garden, the tough smell of crushed rosemary and sage, the sweetness of thyme. In her arms, the fresh herbs, pressed against her breasts, scenting her breasts with the smell of cooking, clean house, crisp laundering, hope. In the last light of day he comes down the lane, hay in his beard and in the creases of his clothing, coughing it up. She has sweetened the bathwater with lavender and basil. She has been waiting all day.
Elizabeth Howes, Wife of Wallace Fuller Age 22
By Megan Baxter
The young wife opens the door. It is early afternoon. She sets up scrubbing and washing, throwing the dirty water out the back window into the flowers there. In her hair, red ribbons. She can see the hay wagon and the men tossing up forkloads, hay dust catching the light of the low sun. The young wife lights the stove, one hand over the burner, waiting to feel its heat. She is pleased, in the sort of way she had prayed for, to see their clothing hanging together on the line, touching in the breeze as if even her dresses longed for his trousers. In the garden, the tough smell of crushed rosemary and sage, the sweetness of thyme. In her arms, the fresh herbs, pressed against her breasts, scenting her breasts with the smell of cooking, clean house, crisp laundering, hope. In the last light of day he comes down the lane, hay in his beard and in the creases of his clothing, coughing it up. She has sweetened the bathwater with lavender and basil. She has been waiting all day.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Weeping Willow
By Megan Baxter
That trees could weep, that bows could bow with grief, that stones could sing. The willow bends in the wind of pain, sweeping the air clean as a knife. The willow moves like a woman in robes, dancing in the wind. Oh ornament of illustrated sorrow, you creature of riverbanks and deep, strange shades. In the heart of the tree water comes from the earth, a vertical river, light warm in the heart, water on the fingertips and toes, stretching. Bow bow, weep tree. Mourn never knowing mourning, or the thought of death. Only the dead do not know they lie.
The Weeping Willow
By Megan Baxter
That trees could weep, that bows could bow with grief, that stones could sing. The willow bends in the wind of pain, sweeping the air clean as a knife. The willow moves like a woman in robes, dancing in the wind. Oh ornament of illustrated sorrow, you creature of riverbanks and deep, strange shades. In the heart of the tree water comes from the earth, a vertical river, light warm in the heart, water on the fingertips and toes, stretching. Bow bow, weep tree. Mourn never knowing mourning, or the thought of death. Only the dead do not know they lie.
Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Table Top Tomb
By Megan Baxter
The grave laid flat like a bed, no warmth from ghostly hip and thigh. All day she slept, and a year later woke remembering only the beginning of the afternoon- rubbing down the hot horses in the barn, heavy with animal scent and the hot hay in the high loft. The curtains grow old and flat in the breeze. Always forgetting, she drinks water lying down, gets wet, needs help changing. If only, if only… She keeps repeating cautions from childhood, always say thank you, never stand behind a horse, don’t touch the woodstove, always circling, had she said thank you? The flat top stone table, no one covers it. A bed for a sleeper, a grave for the dead, a day without conclusion. And heavy the smell of farm animals, and heavy the smell of hay.
The Table Top Tomb
By Megan Baxter
The grave laid flat like a bed, no warmth from ghostly hip and thigh. All day she slept, and a year later woke remembering only the beginning of the afternoon- rubbing down the hot horses in the barn, heavy with animal scent and the hot hay in the high loft. The curtains grow old and flat in the breeze. Always forgetting, she drinks water lying down, gets wet, needs help changing. If only, if only… She keeps repeating cautions from childhood, always say thank you, never stand behind a horse, don’t touch the woodstove, always circling, had she said thank you? The flat top stone table, no one covers it. A bed for a sleeper, a grave for the dead, a day without conclusion. And heavy the smell of farm animals, and heavy the smell of hay.
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