(In appreciation of East Lawn Cemetery, Sacramento, California)

The cemetery of my heart
is not unlike the one I walk through
as if it’s a lovely park, which it is—
large, undulating with greenness
and tall pines, not to mention
a vast field of well-scrubbed
tombstones.

Having once, on a previous walk,
met the man hired to buff them up,
I now take an interest in appreciating
his good work. The in-ground plaques
bronze up from the grass like gleaming
license plates, and when alone,
I stoop to read them, whisper
the embossed names so they are still
held in someone’s mouth.

In the cemetery of my heart, I do not
bring stuffed animals or poinsettias
or decorate the graves of the beloved.
I prefer them unadorned, letting their
spirits rise as they will to populate
the dream of us mere mortals.

I do not expect visitations, but
now and again, after I return home,
his long-gone, musky wood shavings-
and-wet-dog odor curls into my nostrils.

It prompts me to say, as he used to,
when he’d hear my voice on the phone,
There you are! Indeed, there he is,
securely tucked into the cemetery
of my heart where others have
come to join him.

Whether they make themselves
known or not, I trust that they’re
threading their way through my veins,
tiny beloved corpuscles powering
this being I think of as me,

breathing as I walk
the land of the previously
living, the perennially blessed.