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.