Tender Criminal

It's odd...I know...but some cemeteries are too beautiful to be synonymous with the evils we curse upon death.  I can think of a few that take my breath away with each season, and I think more of the grandeur in life, rather than the crime in robbing someone their beloved.  There's so much beauty in the whole cycle, too much to be captured, but I did my best in trying to marry the loss and the life.

You’re not supposed to breathe such life

Not when you’ve been designated one disagreeable purpose

The gracious host to the vacant guest

You exclude none from your embrace

Cradling their deaths in the humming earth

Alive with toil and preparations for the days to come

Soothing their decomposition with the daily compression of roots gripping soil

Cementing stone under the lush cover of fertile moss and lichen

You’re not supposed to be that gracious host

Opening gates to mourning and human regrets

As you do with your sweeping stretch

Embracing the spirited revelries of each Season’s shade

And your trees warm welcome homes

Their limbs hugging nests of new life and you the witness to first breaths

You’re not supposed to elicit joy with your April pink cherry blossoms

Showering your grounds with a silken blanket inviting thoughts of picnics

Or the need for a youthful release in the climbing of your October maples

Shaking free the burning red leaves

Flourishing in an upward spiral with the crisp Autumnal breeze

Or the childlike urge to imprint angels in your fields of pristine February snow

Fearless guardians even under the cloak of deep Winter dark

Their breathless hush echoing off each tinkling of snowflake stacking

You’re not supposed to bathe so freely in Dawn’s shallows and Dusk’s depths

But you feel no shame in doing so

Naked and on display for flirtatious winking eyes

You’re brazen in flaunting your scars

Cold gray slabs marking each and every one

Who was at one brief blink in history

Someone’s baby

And you’re guilty of the blame in verbal violence hurled at your walls

But you’re honest in your raw beauty

And you’re beautiful in your farewells and your receptions

And there’s no fault in loving who you are

And tending to the love put in your care

You’re not supposed to make me smile

And look forward to your next grand gesture

But you do

Mysterious you

E.A. O'Connell