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Cemetery Yard

It takes me fifteen minutes walking fast, but not that far
Three rights, a left, then straight ahead to Cemetery Yard
It sits upon the corner of Macarthur and Fleet Streets
I go there every Wednesday to see ghosts I like to meet

The entry is medieval with it's gated ironwork bars
But there hasn’t been a gatekeeper for many, many years
So I walk right in and I can have a conversation with
The Captain Robert Cunningham or wife of Mister Smith

And who these dried up people were back then God only knows
For their tombstones only have their names and some don't even show
But I speak to them like they’re alive or maybe I am dead?
But either way I'm speaking to them all within my head

Captain Robert Cunningham says 'Thanks for coming here
'Cause back in eighteen sixty five it was the very year
I was in a bluish uniform when under an attack
I was aiming for confederates when shot straight in the back'

At which time I find I'm lacking in appropriate reply
Over all the awe that I now feel about his sacrifice
'Well Captain, not that much has changed and I can’t really lie
The question is not who we were, but how it was we died'

And the grave of Mrs. Smith next to him quietly there sits
Calling out for my attention, so attention I do split
And she tells me that one Christmas Eve while milking in the barn
Two red faced angry Indians strode in and she was harmed

Though she did whatever she could do to put up a good fight
They stuck a knife right through her on that territorial night
'Sara tell me, please, please tell me, am I right or am I wrong?
Do my children lay beside me, or did they live on and on? ”

But the courage isn't in me 'cause the tombstone dates don't lie
'Mrs. Smith, it isn’t if we lived, but how it was we died'
And a couple hours later when it was time to go back home
And I felt that they were satisfied with being left alone
I turned around and looking down I asked them with a sigh
“You have all of the experience…How is it one should die? ”

Written by Sara Fielder © 2012

poem by Sara Fielder
Added by Poetry Lover
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