Cemetery Visit

It’s that time of year…Halloween! And I was challenged to write a poem about a visit to a cemetery. Here’s what I wrote:

The quiet hush of silent voices whispering,

“Do you remember me?”  Haunting.

All that is left of these lives are stones

with name and dates: born…died.  Nothing

in between—like who they loved.  Did they

prioritize what really mattered?   Time.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years….

Where have they gone?  All have reached

this inevitable end where Nature enfolds

the bodies they once were, but not their essence.

“It won’t happen to me” is a lie

they told themselves to quell the fear

of a final curtain without applause.

They pretended death would forget

to take them, but reality remembered.

Everyone ends up here or in an urn

on a shelf, forgotten.  Maybe dusted

off if people come to visit.

After everyone is gone who knew

them, can they still live on?

Writers leave behind their words,

and artists leave their colors.

Some endow a trust or grant a legacy,

but eventually they too will be gone.

And what remains?  Just the breeze

through the trees bending the flowers

on the graves where, if you listen closely,

you can hear the quiet hush

of silenced voices.  Haunting.

Joke: Halloween may not take the cake, but it does take all the candy in the house.

Quote: “It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and -what will perhaps make you wonder more - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.” ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It.” - Benjamin Franklin

Advice: Live each day to the fullest because you never know when it’s going to be your last one.