Present Company Excepted

Except for the false-front skyline
of the little prairie town,
you could see ten miles
in every direction
from the roof of this
one-story flea bag.
There are surely other stories,
but they will not be told.
No one is left who remembers,
and anyway
there's no one left to tell
except for the storyteller,
and he just left.

picnic spot

In little country cemeteries,
leaning on smooth marble
or rough-hewn granite,
I play mourning songs.
Around me, these can't hear at all,
or can they? I can.

Gone the proud young soldier,
gone the child of sadness
and the old, old man.
Gone the mother,
the sister, the wife,
the one who waited,
the one who ran screaming
and the one who could not run.
Gone the lovers of the prairie wind,
those who hailed from wooded lands
and those who longed for the sea.
Gone the laborer, merchant,
student, farmer, drunkard
and intrepid pioneer.
Gone the oppressor and the oppressed,
the simple, the wasted, the slain.
Gone those with names forgotten,
joined by those who knew them,
and gone those in fresh-piled graves
dug by those still living.

Judgments are unknown to me.
Eternities are determined elsewhere.
Yet the cells of souls
dissolved in the tears of heaven
nourish this rough grass,
these hopeful flowers
and whispering cedars.

Around me, these can't hear at all,
or can they? I can,
and leaning on smooth marble
or rough-hewn granite
in little country cemeteries,
between bites of day-old sandwich
I play mourning songs.