The Living

I found a cemetery in my childhood

woods, three stones,

four,

enough,

rubbed the graves clean of dirt

and wrote down the names

of the people who died there. I write them

still, the names of all the people

I have not known and will not know,

and I love them

in ways I cannot love the known

because only strangers

are still and safe

as the lake when the clouds

have settled in for the evening.

The people

I knew who have died are soothing too,

dissolved

into the same water.

Only the familiar living

walk the meadows,

shouting their songs,

brash and cascading,

forcing me into the thick brush

that softens nothing.

First published in Dawn Chorus, Salmon Poetry, Ireland.