#3:  On walks during the pandemic

 

There is a cemetery across the street

And when this started, I’d walk there for exercise

Before the dead consumed us, these dead stood guard

Perhaps they knew what was coming but couldn’t warn us.

It was wonderful, wandering the steep paths among the quiet

Getting lost in the carefully arranged geometry of the departed,

With only the occasional interruption of reality

When the person coming toward you drifted to the opposite side

Out of fear.

I’d stop at the random grave, preferring the older headstones

Wondering who had died at nineteen in 1943

Or who had been lost at six months in 1890.

Was it just time and circumstance?

Sacrificed to a war, consequences of medical inequalities,

Perhaps victims of a crime?

Tombstones are elusive storytellers

That give us only the ending

So our imaginations run wild.

So what do these residents say to those who come to join them?

The cemetery was quickly closed

And we can’t see the surge happening behind the gates

We are no different than them

Our lives, once ended, as mysterious as when we began.