You brought your watercolour kit. <br />For it’s so picturesque – the smallish church <br />in the centre of the village <br />like a mother hen at drowsy midday <br />surrounded by her chicks; <br />the red-white flag of Saint George <br />the only sign of life, fluttering like <br />an aerial footnote to history <br />(or for some, a corner of a foreign football field…) <br /> <br />but there’s a new detail in the picture <br />since last you sketched here: <br />the newest arrival is the oldest: death; <br />the oldest signifier is the fresh-turned earth. <br /> <br />The uninvited thought squirms across the mind <br />like the exposed worms of that rich soil, <br />how reassuring to be buried in this ideal <br />picture-book of continuity amidst the change, <br />a country churchyard. A cemetery <br />has no geography and thus no history <br />save in the hearts of families; <br />here, all is reassuring <br />except to broken hearts which time will heal <br />all bar the scar. <br /> <br />Already, the bunch of daffodils <br />in the empty honey jar <br />have bowed to that same death; <br />reminding us that graves are spun around <br />a hundred and forty years of family history: <br />she’ll remember how she loved her Nan <br />who died at seventy-something <br />for all her own seventyish future years. <br /> <br />Rest in peace means something here. <br />Meanwhile, the daffodils thrive, dotted <br />among the graves, as unconcerned <br />as the soft rubber tyres of the hearse <br />now catching at the Spring’s reaching foliage <br />as it approaches at a perfectly-judged pace <br />down Church Lane, returning peace to peace.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0082-the-new-grave/
