When Life is Too Much - Aug 5 2025

 

When Life is Too Much

Aug 5 2025

After words had been said

the bereaved embraced

and the mourners departed

after the tears had been spent

soil shovelled

and the diggers left,

there was an emptiness

the sound of my breathing couldn’t fill

but still

the sense of peace was uncanny,

a feeling I never expected

in this place of sadness and loss.

Where the infants are buried

is especially so,

a secluded patch

toward the back

behind a low cast iron fence,

small markers 

carved with cherubs and hearts

that seem too close to be right.

But still, the serenity;

an oasis of green

in the city’s grinding rush,

a welcome retreat 

when life gets to be

too fast and too much

its carpet of green

smelling of freshly cut grass,

and its over-arching trees

standing like sentinels

that have been there forever

keeping watch

its mismatched markers

and marble monuments,

epitaphs

as idiosyncratic

as the souls they commemorate

and the early ones

that over time have settled,

leaning

like old men

with bad legs

not ready to give up.

How the sound of dirt

falling on wood

has a firm dull thump

of finality.

While the last clump

earth-to-earth

is quiet as the grave.

how the dark oblong patch

carved out of fresh green grass

looks raw;

and even though

it will soon enough grow over

is as good a metaphor for absence

as any unanswered prayer

and how marble weathers 

and even granite doesn’t last.

A sober reminder

for when life is too much

that this, too, shall pass.