"Solace" by Terri Lynn Cummings

Solace

Terri Lynn Cummings

The path slopes like prayer

then spills onto a pasture 

of stones. They stand 

crooked and stained like teeth

worn and crowded

in rows of bones

In front of a marker

I kneel, sense heartache

shift from black to gray 

in the shadow of a tree

its shade inching the trunk 

like a caterpillar

foreign and familiar 

Sorrow holds my hand

while a hymn 

hums from the grave

Memories, a den filled

with images recalled

in every rock of Father’s chair

fit themselves around my shoulders

His walking stick of a body

ravished by disease, savors 

the jazz of a new beginning

in the unpacked room of spring

My mother, a sister of the mind

shares hazel irises and shapes 

the poems of my voice as I recall

their long-buried garden of marriage 

loosed from tight bones of duty

and the compass of time

I imagine they stroll past friends

dates, and sentiments

a city of crosses and wombs of death

no edges to hone or dreams to slake

full as the moon though I long to wane

in the slow dust of renewal

Poet’s Notes:  I visited my parents’ graves the weekend after Memorial Day. It had been one year since I’d been there, and I felt as if Mom and Dad beckoned me. I drove from the city to the town cemetery where they waited to see me again, and my heart grew lighter as every mile passed.