Thoughts from a Forgotten Tennessee Graveyard

Innocent laughter fit for the elementary, accompanied by joyous skipping.

The brisk winds kiss our cheeks in soothing rivulets.

The day seems everlasting.

The disorganized clusters of flowers and bees grace us with their presents. The mockingbirds,

Sing along as the fat-bodied bees zip from each iridescent floral alcove.

Like abstract paint splattering, reds, purples, and yellows coat the scene.

The bees use their power to transport life and beauty around the clearing, leaving

The grim plot alive with the colors of their work.

No spectres lurk here.

Just warm nutritious sun beams, feeding the dense thickets of neglected greenery.

But these ambitious weeds over take the modest, weather-worn tombstones. The ones covered in

The forgotten names,

Of some forgotten folk,

In some forgotten place.

Their overgrown tombs are now just a novelty playground for us, the forgetful.

Tall weeds and itchy grass help to obscure the horrid truth of mortality,

Transfiguring the field of the dead. But I am not one of them, I am different, special, alive.

So for now, my smile will last.

Plain names in plain rows, all carved into dilapidated stones.

These dates are all from long ago, so far from any time I could know.

Buried young and old, they rest the same.

I wonder when these folks had visitors last.

Were they obtuse and intrusive? Or just grieving loved ones?

Legacies, lineages, bloodlines, all trapped between these boxes of rotted pine.

This resonates none, or doesn’t seem to as I wander; admiring the shapes the clouds could take.

I’m unburdened by thought, like a salmon in a stream or a leaf gliding with the breeze.

The day seems long.

Until I spot a lone headstone.

Containing only a surname.

My own, carved deep, made obscenely legible.

No dates, solitary, the chunk of grey marble is a lodestone. Like an immense magnet, it beckons.

I feel its presence, the sickly aura, it’s a superstitious sickness.

My own name is printed pristine, with purpose.

Is it a myopic mystery or an orchestrated omen?

Who resides underneath? Or is the spot vacant? Has it been made in advance?

Who reserved this spot? Has it been ordained by a higher power?

Is this where I will rest last?

The day now seems short.

Naïve laughter fit for the elementary, accompanied by disrespectful trotting.

The wind leers at me, it’s been lashing out coldly.

The breeze will last.

The gentle golden rays have deceived me, they have been toasting my hide.

The sun will last.

The flowers and bees now seem to harass, idly playing in the breeze.

Like the young, they are blessed with ignorance.

The birds mock, taunting me with their incessant twittering.

Amused by my fate, free to fly far away.

At least when my day is at its end,

And I am but a forgotten name.

Buried amongst forgotten folk,

In some forgotten place, trapped between rotted pine, and the flesh peels from my head.

Leaving behind my white-toothed, hairless skull; I know that

My smile will last.