Showing posts with label grave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grave. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Where Bracken and Buckwheat Blow ...a Sonnet




Beside us the bracken and buckwheat blow
We gather; as dirge of maple and birch
Ruffles the soft, solemn hush of the crowd
In a still graveyard next to a white church
Asleep in Jesus and Amazing Grace
Trembling with sorrow, our words and tears blend
This body has reached its last resting place
We must return to life’s journey again
Back to the learning, the groaning of toil
Back to the earning of Treasure or spoil

***

Out in the distance a katydid trills
Here we commit our loved one to the earth
Cradled forever by rivers and hills
A marble monument its single proof
Of beloved lips that smiled, laughed and kissed
Of work-worn hands that labored long and hard
Of eyes that twinkled in blue tenderness
Recalled as we gather in this graveyard
Where only the shell is covered with sod
Memories dwell in our hearts; soul with God

***

…now we turn, from the tear-stained mound of dirt
We are not yet summoned by He who ordains
Our numbered moments of heart-ache and hurt
We must return to life’s passion and pain
Of buckwheat and bracken; of sun-scorched halls
To plant and to harvest its tare-stricken clime
Someday it will be our name that He calls
Closing our eyes on this vapor of Time
The tide of mankind surges as a whole
Until God separates body from soul

© Janet Martin