Dancing in Graveyards

The autumn winds grow cold
as you slowly walk
through the abandoned graveyard.

Weeds grow between the stones.
Fresh fallen leaves blow in the wind.
Trees block the light.

Each stone tells a story,
marble bards of sadness and loss,
of time cut short.

You shiver in the October chill,
and choose, in the brief hours of sunlight
left to you,

to flee,
to walk, to dance
in the sun.

About this poem

The woman I love and I were riding a couple of weeks ago, top down in the convertible, taking pictures of the fall color, when we came on this mostly abandoned graveyard in Hebron, New York.

Look at the grave marker in the picture closely. 10 years. 11 months. 27 days. The people who commissioned that stone knew what many of us forget.

Every day matters.

Tom