"Memento"
Before spring plowing, the farmer weeps
and prays. He has sent his sons again
to pluck the headstones from the nameless graves.
Do not wonder that the natives claimed to glimpse
their forbears in the deer’s deep eyes;
it had grazed all summer on the sacred mounds.
Feign no surprise that children, who
are closer to the ground, still recognize
the gray face smiling from the dusty moon.
The sculptor’s set aside her stone
for immortality. She is out digging clay to mold
one thousand busts in her own image.
I watched my father’s face fade pale as ash,
his voice become the trickled
whisper of a distant mountain spring.
As certainly as Homo is our name, we are alike
descendants of the dirt— each grown
from grains as small as specks of sand,
each swelling like a wave, a moment’s animation,
quickly sinking down into the rich, black sea
and waiting there to rise again.
© 2007 Will Eastland
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