A slumbering yard filled with quiet souls
The joyful living now dead
Feeling no sorrow in their last breath.
I walked among the rows of bent and sinking graves,
watched the wind blow across debris
from a dark and sullen day.
tombstones carved with vines and crosses,
and effigies of angels and men bent in remorse,
the silence lay thickening.
In the breeze of my imagination
I heard a child's laughter
as I crossed into the place of little ones.
Tiny marks in the ground
of small lives that struggled only to lose,
A parents kiss imprinted on tiny hands and foreheads,
A remembrance of dreams turned to dust.
As the sky deepens and the night lingers in,
I walk among pillars of men,
Giants of society who changed their worlds
and left them behind
Before they could see them begin to rust.
Yet beyond those great minds
were the families, all having died as one
Their disease fettered bodies now hidden from us.
The farther I go, the deeper in,
The years rewind all carved in stone.
At the center of this city for our dead
I am swallowed up in serene desolation
The weight of decades pushing me to my knees
And I pray "Please, Just for one more day, let me live..."

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