Cemetery

~

a funereal pallor 

drapes the garden, 

now a cemetery littered 

with unburied mourners 

that once shared my 

long summer salad days,

 gone the mottled warmth, 

heady scents, children’s musical 

laughter too, all must now pay

the change of season’s price, 

prone, sacrificial, destitute, 

newly frosted blooms

stare down passively from

lichen-licked terracotta pots, 

ghostly, white-faced, shocked stiff

vague helpless faded beauties 

of yesterday,

coppered leaves no longer 

dance between barren stems,

but hang crucified by the 

sudden chill, like hapless fish in 

spider-knitted cobweb nets,

I walk amongst them 

to give thanks, now just cold 

colourless brittle tombs, 

there is no life amongst 

these slatted shadows, no pulse,

just the smell of death

*

© GRS 9/24