Bunn Hill

By Terra Wolfe

No, you can't sell me
your park-like new graveyards,
identical markers
flush to the ground.
or even your careful
perpetual upkeep,
impersonal, perfect
computerized care.

I know a hill place
with large gaudy gravestones,
quite ostentatious, that
children can climb.
unless there's a funeral,
no one ever mows there.
Except for reunions
Memorial day.

A place I found rabbits'
nests, tucked behind tombstones,
picked branches of dogwood
discovered a snake;
heard stories of family.
walked with tall people.
Some brought me to visit,
then went back to stay.

Where there's a history
for every tall tombstone
like a family scrapbook
each mossy stone
tells of inhabitants
there on the hilltop
cut deep in the granite 
remembering them.

Jacob, the patriarch,
born in Connecticut
traveled along the
Chenango canal,
carved a farm from a forest 
and started a family,
rests under the granite
that's simple and tall.

David, his son, who
once fought in Virginia;
wrote letters from war places
back to the farm.
He was captured and lived
to return to his hill.
My great grandfather, Burr, 
was his oldest child.

And all the tall tombstones 
have others surrounding,
small weathered and cracked ones
of children and wives.
colored the stories,
of details and dailiness
farm people lived.

My great grampa's grave 
is there. I remember
a gentle, a quiet man
who walked alone.
next to him was the mother-in-law 
of my grandmother,
who ruled the whole family
with iron-Baptist gloves.

My grandfather is there
beneath the pink granite.
Grandfather, holder of 
five year old hands,
who looked like a mountain
and baited my fishhook
and shattered my child-secure world 
when he died.

My grandmother's name 
has been carved in pink granite
beside him for twenty two
years he's been gone.
the grass on the empty plot
waiting to cover her
always seemed a macabre,
a beckoning thing.


It numbers her days
away from the hilltop
numbers us all in the 
ultimate roll.
It reminds us that still
our moments aren't over
that we have each other
a little while more.

There's an emptier part
near the bordering pine trees
where each of us carefully looks
when we're there.
And mentally traces
the grass on the hillside
the six feet or so that
we'll have for our own.

Where we'll return 
to the bosom of family
on this land Jacob carved
from the forested hill
Ancestors precede us,
loved people lead us
to that final reunion
that last coming home.

No, you keep your well mowed
your sterile new graveyard
Memorial park with
anonymous care.
Sell your standardized graves
to meticulous people.
I'll rest in my family's
more comfortable home.

Copyright              Terra Wolfe 2006

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