November Morning at a California Cemetery

November Morning, Mountain View, Oakland, California 

Sleeping in quiet

And in peace under

The palm trees that

Stir in the breeze

 

Sleeping in morning

Are the missed under the

Gray tombstones

Wet with mist

 

Sleeping in autumn

In the city of the dead

As a girl stands on a hill

Looking toward a city that’s not so still

 

In serenity the trees

Turn crimson slowly

Above many a what

If, if only, sleeping below

 

Tombstones touch

The mist as the mist

Wraps around the morning

In late autumn, over the forgotten

 

The cemetery girl looks

At tombstones lost in gray

Mausoleums lost in mist

She wonders who is missed

Who died on a November Day