About the Dead: Poems

Too Many Hillsides for the Dead

[54] TO O M A n y h i L L S i D e S F O r T h e D e A D how long will we continue to fill them with fathers and mothers and for what? They may as well be monuments to wind, soil, grass, trees, an empty bucket slowly filled over the course of the summer with rainwater. Our dead just float there in those lidded ferryboats—most stopped twiddling their thumbs long ago having remembered all there is to glean from a life like any other; and now, they lean against the wood frames like turnips wondering why nobody ever comes to visit, why such lovely vistas go on unnoticed by the living. ...