The Saddest Epitaph
Graveyards hide in the countryside,
with hand-etched headstones abraded
semi-smooth by unrelenting elements.
Cemeteries of twenty decades and more,
kept up by sparse ancestral cooperation,
survive climate, indifference and atrophy.
The elegance of rural surroundings
may distract from the gravity of purpose,
but somehow soothes family penitence.
A barely readable marker discloses
"Died March, 1871," of an affliction
now cured in a neighborhood drug store.
"My angels are in heaven with their mother
keeping her company until I may join them."
The rusted placque still clings to its marble cross.
Poem and Photo- Copyright © 2009 by Jack Huber-
All rights reserved.
For a larger view, click here.
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"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."
--Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
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