Pitiless Love at La Grange Burial Ground

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

A cloud-like breeze in Florida flows through

The cemetery.  Headstones with their names

And dates don’t notice breezes.  Hopes once grew

Inside the brains now buried.  Death makes claims

That those beneath cannot resist and could

Not then.  Aunt Wilma forced a task that now

He ill recalls.  She called to him, his good,

To plant a God’s gloss shrub.  To disallow

Her orders would have been forever wrong.

The plant was planted in the graveyard sand

Above her sister who had lain there long.

Gardenia blossoms never branched or spanned.

  The sear of sun, the lack of shade, the lack

    Of rain soon turned the white and green buds black.