A pause upon an evening walk

A pause upon on an evening walk

My thoughts are of survival.
The things that were and now forgotten,
seem to claim a patience that the earth imparts—
soft decay to spite the years spent underfoot
and celebrating change with silence,
waiting for the chance to leap
into the memory and chide it for its crass neglect.

What riches lie within the old man's wrinkled skin,
his clouded eye, the phrases almost said
and soon contained
beneath the coffin's lid forever—
their heritage concealed
in that successive line of dying age to come...

and there is earth down there
to hold it all; fecundity awaits the rain
of sorrow when the years come by,
get in the way, and then are brushed aside.

Here is where I wish to die.
This restless earth contains my peace,
my lofted spirit bourne upon the spring
that wells up from a depth
I never knew in life, a heritage
remembered from some gene within me,
or a misbegotten meme.

Such thoughts, contentious as they seem,
become my friends. They let me wander
through the cemetery, listen to the dead
and smile with them. They know me,
feel my passions, sing my songs of hope.
They congregate, there on my walk
to tell me that they understand. They speak
around me, through me, in my passion;
as their stones decay, they lift my moment
to confirm the stream of love I sense
as I walk where they last lay down,
my family in consciousness, my holy blood,
my consecrated rest.
~