Further In

I'm writing more verse these days from the looks of it. It's been so long. I used to write poems all the time. I even personalized them and gave them away as gifts. I hardly ever kept copies which I somewhat regret now as it would be fun to go back and read all the things I wrote as a pre-teen.

I'm getting back in the flow ever so slowly. Whoever reads this, thanks for bearing with me.

Beneath the rich, dark earth they sleep
As time alone thus weathers stone
Through grasses long and lush I creep
Past crosses on which sunlight shone
Life visits death in reverence and leaves behind remembrance.

I was finally motivated enough to visit the little graveyard near campus this evening. I'd been meaning to take a walk there for the past 4-5 years but never actually did. I actually think I know someone who is buried there, a very old, deeply spiritual man who preached once or twice at our campus Christian Fellowship. I still see his wife from time to time. They are from a different period when life was more simple, people were more polite and everything was straightforward and no nonsense. I tried to find his grave but failed. 

It was already a little past 6pm but the sun was still beating down rentlessly. I had to walk with care as three quarters of the graveyard were overgrown with kneehigh weeds and grass and I often couldn't see what I was about to step on. The majority of the people buried there were Indian with a sprinkling of English or perhaps Eurasian names. Many of the graves implied that the person laid to rest there was poor as their only markers were plain wooden crosses with the painted inscriptions all but faded away.

Largest of all was an unmarked tomb fixed with two crosses leaning at precarious angles. The tomb of a married couple perhaps? Prettiest of all was a heavily engraved celtic cross, also unmarked. Perhaps the most touching of all was the inscription upon a stone slab set in the ground, all but invisible unless you looked downward, in memory of a daughter who died in childhood. And another tombstone in memory of 'Rosaline', beloved wife and mother who left this earth a little over a hundred years ago. 

Right at the end of the graveyard stood a slender, wooden cross that reached way up to the sky. In all the years I drove by I never noticed it before. It stood there, watching over the graves as if to say that death is only for a little while for Christ has overcome the grave.I always feel a twinge of sadness whenever I read a particularly moving epitaph especially if it came from a time when poetic verse and scriptural references were the norm instead of what is now a series of numbers separated by a hyphen. I always wonder when eternity comes if I may meet the person who inspired the loving memories and be able to tell them I was there, I wondered about you and I remembered you.