Arlene Corwin Poetry

             A Walk through The Cemetery

Who grieves at all, his loved one gone,

Who grieves his heart away at dawn;

A child dead, a brother killed,

Mother dying, wife’s thoughts stilled:

For those who live, left to despair

I dare to say, from God-knows-where,

No ‘them’ is there.

Be of good cheer. There’s no them here.

The them is gone, is flown, dissolved –

Dissolved and flown; is done, done, done.

As for what’s under that great lawn –

Who cares for rotten skin and bone?

Not I (if there is even ‘I’).

This so-called ‘I’ would rather fly

Than spend the walk in cry, cry, cry –

For crying is a kind of lying…

To and down.

Lying to unworthy ego,

Lying down when one should run.

Absence – let’s examine absence:

Sediment of sentiments;

Guilt, nostalgia; where is love?

Is it one of the above?

Any, all? A thing at all?

None of the above is love.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

Heart can often pull you under.

Absence ought to make you ponder,

Shake the bedrock self in wonder.

Thinking’s process pulls it sunder;

Feeling puts you back in bed.

When reacting to the dead,

Head is what you need instead:

Head and faith.

Let us discern, let’s separate,

Learn to look at last year’s date,

Disregard the fate that took it.

Last year’s date forms this year’s fate.

Discriminate and over-look. It’s

Attitude that helps to brook it.

Cemetery’s fragrant walk

Was built for time. A chance to talk,

To honor. We are what we are –

(Besides our never-changing souls)

Contingent on contingent lives.

He who is contingent thrives.

Like empty bowls

We drain, are cleaned then filled –

Emptied, cleaned and then re-filled.

Lives that pass through and around

Are lives to which we have been bound.

Interlaced, no one’s escaped.

Lives that shape are also shaped.

When the thing that lives must go,

Gone the thing that shaped also.

Where it’s gone we just don’t know.

’Where’