Graveyard

After the Yahrzeit of a family friend, I walked through the graveyard and saw how each tombstone looked different. But when I exited, they all looked surprisingly similar, and these words arose.

I stand at the gate and watch the sea of stone

Hundreds of rocks set in crisscrossing lines

From afar every stone looks the same

Perfect copies of the same exact rock

When all’s said and done, just the rock is left

A name

Two dates

And maybe a prayer

All carved in the gray stone of our death

People want to leave a mark on this world

They want to be remembered as more than a stone

They decorate it

Paint it

Try to fill it with life

But, in the end, it’s only a stone

As you walk through this garden of stone

You see every rock is not the same

The name is different

The dates are different

The prayers change, too

But the stone, the stone

Is always the same

The same exact stone of our death

Each stone is a call out to the living

From a place far away

“I was here

I am here

This rock is mine

In life and in death

This is a spot that is mine

In this cruel, cruel world”

I see all the rocks as the same one

All chipped out of the great stone of life

Into little stones of death

You take a part of the world that made and killed you

And claim it as your own

And call that space your own

Do not trouble me with life

Do not trouble me with death

But please

Save me a bit

Of that big living stone

Author's Note

Thinking of Michal Austin
May she rest in peace.
17/04/2015