I went to the cemetery in the town where I was born.

One of those bright, brittle days,
sunlight falling sharp on grass and stone,
through changing leaves,
almost
but not quite
warming.

The ground was hard under my boots,
not churned to mud the way it was
the last time I was here,
shoulder-to-shoulder
with black-clad, red-eyed relatives,
faces stretched thin by another's dying.

I paced lines of graves,
with their random scattering
of token floral gestures
left by the living
and burnt by frost.
A few names seemed to mean something
and a few graves stood out more than others:
Irish, Italian,
more ornate and Catholic than the rest.

Traffic coughed along the A6,
and I thought about that road,
about how many places of personal significance
and lives of those I've known
have been connected by it.

Standing by that mute, cold headstone,
smelling earth and lilies
and other people's grief,
I renew my promise to myself
that I will not be buried here.

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