A young boy's views on deathe and the buried dead.
Silent Friends
When I was a budding boy my silent friends were in one place
I visited them on a Saturday in the spring and later in the fall
To reach them I walked two miles carrying a snack of
two ham biscuits into my useless back pockets to
be eaten just before I crossed the stone-bed creek where
on the other side was a one hundred year old cemetery
I ate listening to its rippling sound of serenity in
the forever silence and emptiness of the dead
Wiping bread crumbs from my lip corners and
climb a small hill to say good morning to old friends
some of whom I'd met more than a year ago
On this day I wanted to meet new ones to
included some of the many Civil War heroes
each and every one dying gallantly according to
bold carvings along with their names and rank
Beyond the soldiers and over by the woods
I visited the poor and dead lying under dirt piles
not a single stone marker except little metal things
holding glass window plates with a faded name but
I stopped and hung around the fresh dirt of
one so short it had to be the forever grave of
a new baby without a marker and without a name
I had known one person when alive now in his buried box
He had been the grandpa of a school classmate and
his was the first dead body I had ever seen in a casket
wearing a wool coat in summer's heat so tightly held and
really stuffed deep down in satin to make him comfortable on his heavenward trip so I knelt down to pay my respects
I had looked forward to visiting a couple who had died in
a lovers' brawl the stone's message hid nothing -
SHE CHEATED
HE SHOT HER DEAD
SHOT HIMSELF
IN THE HEAD
Walking away I wondered if there were children and
how they might have handled it all
My favorite friend to visit was a young girl who
died after a fall from a horse and the father who must have been a horseman erecting a stone pony with
an empty saddle made of genuine leather now
rotted away lying in strings on
an animal as dead as its ghost mount
Visited by the most people was the resting place of
young twin boys who had drowned when
only twelve and buried side by side
remembered with a faded photograph taken
on their last birthday before
they went river swimming with daddy who
died at thirty-two trying to
rescue his own - now lying next to the sons
he had promised a special outing
Heading home I wondered if there would be
something for lunch after I had walked two miles back into my world of the living where we never talked about dying
because some said it was bad luck to speak about death
that it could make it happen sooner somehow
F William Broome 3007-08
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Reviewed by Smita Tewari
10/19/2009
How do you combine such powerful poetry with Fiction? 2 different genres!
Impressed!
Bill, I hate to spoil the mood of this movingly told tale,
but your lovers' brawl head stone reminded me of one I read
about some years ago. All it said was: I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.
Silent Friends
