My son asked how much a tombstone costs.
Depends if you want an angel
to
watch over you.
We trace ancestry through the graveyard
and calculate dates—how common it was to
bury babies.
Some lucky souls merit saintly companions
who guard their tombs with outstretched
arms.
Or even a wrought iron fence to ward off vagrants.
But look how the monied died just as young.
At the rear of the yard are the stones we
can’t read,
their shallow etchings mildewed and faded.
Bare of epitaph, they lean against each
other.
Even their stones are tired.
Then there are the markers that only bear a
number,
Like the tattooed at Auschwitz,
like the burial ground at the asylum.
One straggler is off alone and we wonder
if he wanted it so.
The rounded stone juts white from Earth
like a tooth.
And what of those who couldn’t even get
inside the fence—
separated from the gilded, even here.