Stone bears an inscription blanketed by clover

Calloused chisel marking a hardly legible life blown over

Ant hills and bruised earth grows strong over your name

The sunworked dirt and tired feet push turf to reclaim

Thickening the distance between life and thereafter

Flowerless, lacking tributes, no peony, iris, aster.

-

May memorials seeping grief into thought

I loop twice around the gravel before pulling fixed like a French knot

To find some grave that calls me, away from oaks and elm

Abandoned by descendants left in this realm

I am not of you, we meet by chance in a small effort to be good

we share only Dayton, Germany and the deformity of womanhood

-

Rubbing delicate with edema fingers to reveal Amelia

The breaking of time's firmament becoming memorabilia

This memory, too, will return to the earth with me when I go

So if I don’t publish this now for those I'll never know

Who may later tread over loose sod and poor soul,

In holy head bowing, unaware of her personal growth

Marked ‘present’ only by half-covered zinc-colored stone.