Robert Frost: In a Disused Graveyard
The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay
Abby Zimet: John Prine as Tender Poet
“If his songs were allowed to exist in the world—so simply written, so profoundly beautiful —surely there was room for other good, decent things, too.”
Emily Dickinson: Grief is a Mouse
Grief is a Thief—quick startled—
Pricks His Ear—report to hear
Of that Vast Dark—
That swept His Being—back—
Charlotte Turner Smith: Sonnet Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex
She saw herself as a poet first and foremost, poetry at that period being considered the most exalted form of literature. Scholars now credit her with transforming the sonnet into an expression of woeful sentiment. Although an important writer and poet, Smith had a difficult family life and died in poverty, largely forgotten.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Dirge without Music
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind…
Dawn Potter: Canto
The season was autumn. Threads of smoke
unwound from the chimneys. Every compass pointed
toward winter.
Lynn Freehill-Maye, Phillip Pantuso: Return to Nature
Green burials go beyond not polluting or wasting. It’s about people needing and caring for land, conducting life-affirming activities there—including death.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: This Against the Night
Sweet hyssop and the sweltering hives
from which sail bees, their resolute flight
into July, into my garden.
Luray Gross: If Two People Are Aware of the Rising Moon
When his mind grew empty
and his heartbeat slowed to a vague stutter,
our father no longer walked the fields at night.
Jay Carson: Michael
On his route with a load of papers on his head,
he wasn’t tough enough to scare Michael
who socked him so hard papers flew
like peace doves all over Fifth Avenue.
Yana Djin: April Elegy
again April is here
with its sun of brass
and its moon of steel
John Samuel Tieman: Elegy for a Poet
Michael Castro 1945 – 2018 while the snow wants to melt winter loiters and I will listen I will listen for you when I need a noun a sudden muscle an animal can use to … Continue reading
Rick Campbell: Elegy in a Small Town Churchyard
There are many born again or dreaming of it, another lot wishing their frailty would end. What if I were smitten today under this dogwood tree, moss dangling in … Continue reading
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