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We stop where the Pierce and Stanley families rest, their plots secured by dry wild grasses and bone-white clamshells cupping the tops of graves as our hands could. Behind us I hear the Atlantic whose winds surprised these inland miles with sand, surprise them still. The sand drifts west, grazing cemetery crosses and head- stones as it passes.
Does wanting proof of what passes draw us in to visit the dead we never knew? A stand of bald cypresses hems the farthest graves to the road where you stand, camera ready to shut on an image twinned in your lens. Row after row of markers and I see you upright like them -- dumb mark of a man.
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The lilies spin in their plastic cups. Let offerings turn or stay: no one will know if we lie down between graves, face east with the dead, our bodies making a nidus of bones in the sand. I compare our births and names and those of the dead, touch wet fingers to wind, thinking my trespass against you. |