At the far edge of the expanding cemetery <br />in its uncertain spiritual limbo, <br />its small gravestones re-emerge only in late summer <br />like a clipped coat, the tall grass annually machined; of <br />those who made no will or testament <br />that we know of and we may be wrong <br />nor do we know their last thoughts if thoughts <br />nor do the stones reveal the names they knew themselves by; and <br />was the human love their inscriptions indicate <br />less or greater than that evoked <br />by their own kind? What sort of peace <br />do they rest in? <br /> <br />It’s not the most imaginative corner <br />to have chosen. There’s a perfect place <br />by the 16th tee of the golf course, <br />high on the hill, facing west, <br />riddled with a rabbit warren <br />where on a summer evening <br />more rabbits than you’d guess, of every size <br />bob around and sun themselves <br />and seem to feel so safe that they ignore <br />the humans, dogless at that hour, <br /> <br />an elysian field where dogs might dream and twitch <br />for eternity; repent, or lie down in peace with brer rabbit, <br />their natures everlastingly fulfilled; <br />where in the summer evening sun, <br />facing the glowing sky and gold-tipped clouds <br />cottontails and men might sit, philosophise and speculate <br />together, about the little that the species know <br />of each other’s knowledge.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0180-let-sleeping-dogs-lie/
