WEBVTT

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"Visiting The Graves"

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All day we travel
from bed to bed,

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our children clutching
homemade bouquets

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of tulips and
jonquils, hyacinth,

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handfuls of yellow
salad from the fields.

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In Pennsylvania County
our dead face east,

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my great grandfather
and his sons

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facing what is now
a stranger's farm.

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One great uncle chose a
separate hill, an absence

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in the only photograph.

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Under the big oak we
fumble for his name

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and the names of sisters
scattered like coins.

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But here is my
father, near the stone

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we watched him weep
beside for 20 years.

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And my mother beside him,
the greenest slab of grass.

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By horse it was hours
to Franklin County,

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to Liberty Christian Church
where her mother lies.

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The children
squabble in the car,

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roll on the velvet slope of
the churchyard, pout or laugh

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as we point out the gap in the
mountain where her mother's

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grave is underwater.

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The lake laughing,
the house, the house

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still standing like a tooth.

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We tell them how we picked
huckleberries from the yard,

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tell them what a huckleberry
is, but the oldest

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can't keep straight
who's still alive.

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The smallest wants her flowers
back, who can blame them?

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This far from home,
tired of trying

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to climb a tree of bones,

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they fall asleep
halfway down the road,

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and we fall silent too,

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who were taught to
remember and return.

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Our sister is driving,
I'm in the back.

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The sky before us, a
broken field of cloud.

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[APPLAUSE]

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