Last June, I spent three weeks in South Mississippi and the surrounding area, driving along the coast and anywhere the friend I was with chose to take us. We saw a lot of old, ruined graveyards so overgrown by brushes and trees, brambles and thorny vines. I still have the faint scars on my legs from getting tangled in one while picking blackberries on a dirt road. It was a beautiful experience, but it was a shame to see these tributes to the dead in such shabby condition. In places, stones were broken and so moss covered you couldn't read them. As we drove away from one such site, I wrote this poem on a napkin from the seafood shack where we'd had lunch earlier in the day. It was a great lesson in always keeping a notebook handy, even when the plan had been to go to the beach. (The image below was taken at the cemetery that inspired the poem.)
Earthbound
Angels
It’s
not enough
To
bend without breaking
In
the dawn
We
laugh at earthbound angels
Crumbling
beneath
Savanna
summer suns
Where
kudzu clings
In
leaching vines
Choking
even ruined remains
Of
old houses of worship
Swamp
claimed
Sinking
in bubbling marshes
We
all drown
In
cattails and kool-aid
The
echoes of pasts
We’ll
never understand
There’s
no honor
In
remembrance these days
Or
anything really.
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