Grave Matters Ii Poem by Andy Brookes

We used to visit Great Great Grandams grave
once a year, a ritual of flowers and tidying.
Gran said the passed and ancestors were important
our past tells us where we come from,
but not necessarily where you're going she said.

one day, I will rest here too.
we stood around looking at the grey tombstones
which meant nothing to us, the words etched
the sleeping peaceful platitudes to the dead,
our faces moulded into a false deference we did not feel.
eventually she too was laid to rest half way up the hill
by the stone church to join those gone before.

after some thirty years we visited the plot
that place of resting to visit our dearly beloved.
where our ancestors lay, or so we thought
in peaceful slumber, awaiting their resurrection,
if you believe in such.

it had been a long time but roots, no matter how far,
you have left them behind, still tug one back.
the homing pigeon instincts we all have
to return as a sort of pilgrimage of the soul.

the church halfway up the hill, sign posted by it's stone steeple
looked as benign as always.
we entered the small grave yard opening the rusty irongate
its unoiled gratuitous creak but there was no sign of the graves.
stacked on the back wall were the markers
the carved dearly beloveds, the resting with God,
the in the arms of Jesus, the much missed and in memoriams
a wailing wall of ancestors muddled and mixed
like so many pulled teeth the mouth of memory was empty
and extracted showing nothing but bare gums.

sadly we trooped back down the hill and into town
mourners it seemed, with no place to mourn.
still we raised a glass to all of those gone before
because after all we take our ancestors
within us wherever we go.