Lagrange Cemetery Waiting for Death

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

The shadows of the trees and Spanish moss

Fall down upon the gravestone and the grass.

Those shadows, almost ghost-like, fall across

The dark and white gardenia.  It will pass

To shade of death too soon because the ones

Who planted it for much loved sister, aunt—

Lorena—did not know that noon-hot suns

Of Titusville would kill it.  They would daunt

The love, pathetic love, because of lack

Of knowledge.  Oh, they knew Lorena well

But wisdom in the planting was too slack.

The heat of afternoons caused silent knell.

  We, Wilma and one other, left the plant

    Well watered, not quite hearing Satan’s chant.

© Phillip Whidden