Tombstones

When I am gone,
bury me deep
and paint my tombstone
red,

the color of passion,
jarring perhaps,
unsettling in a place
where decorum is the rule,
but truer than a name
and a date,
let color shout my love,
inappropriately vibrant,
so powerful
it should never be allowed
to die.

About this poem. 

When I took this photograph in the Dorset, Vermont graveyard, I thought of soldiers in a row. Of sameness and conformity. Why, I wondered, are tombstones always gray, or white, when life is full of color and zest? And if THIS life is so full, I expect the next one to be even more so. So why is the gateway between them so dull.

Yes, I think about weird stuff sometimes. Must be the coffee.

Tom