The Graves of the Melvilles: Wednesday Morning in Woodlawn Cemetery, 2019

Peppered with pens and pebblesand a bit of broken seashell—trophies from votariesstirred to sail his poetry—sits a monolith with tongueless scroll;and below the soft, green knoll,the lees of the swelling, whaling writer lie with the scribe,a Sperm Whale's head on her starboard sideand a helix of hedera helix crawling across the isle of Elizabeth's crossto the angular headstone of her lightning-rod—a stove body under native skiesthat's circled the sun two hundred times:

white, worshipped bones lounging beneath,still-spouting skulls for still, devout priests;these unstaved souls in swarming seas,a haze of ambiguities.