Kneeling Poem by Jenny Kalahar

Kneeling at daybreak beside a breadbox church
that sways slightly toward protective, towering maples
I am level with the tops of the pocked and grey
these gravestones of my eventual neighbors

I shade my eyes against bright flickers of light through leaves
and almost see the raised or engraved lines as a single page
of grass-green paper written in stone-grey ink,
a poem of our old hometown

Here I was once
This I did
She I loved for all my life
He was first to build a home
This babe our last before we accepted
This dress I wear I made myself
This land you stand on cleared by me
Forget me not those whom placed me here
Short I slumber, long I rise
Here we are, joined again together
He a preacher
She a teacher
Here lies Mr.
Dead and gone


Dead and gone, the words read on
until I shift to sit deeper within the grasses
and, gazing over fields
I see another text written there.
Uncut blades offering a different story
upon their nodding, waving tops:
A dancing, ever-changing page
of some future not yet written