St. Bernardine Monastery - Community Cemetery

© copyright All Rights Reserved Wilson, Richard S.

Grackles with eyes of halfed lopes
jabber along the loose coils of barbed wire.
Weeds grow to dizzy angles here
while I call out the friar's names:
Osbelt, Smyth, Hatch, McNammera.
Something calls from the scrub pines
that casts scented shadows from sun-stung
needles. The pine cones mime balmed secrets
that gather meaning from the wind.

At the priory across the road,
shades are pulled to the noon sun
and the refectory is filled with
the clutter sounds of spoons against bowls.
I stand here among these headstones
where the air is as still as a young possum's breath
and the field rocks doze in the drainage culvert,
their backs bleached and dry.
it is late.
The slow sanctus of the Angelus bell
Encircle our small lives.

Come Sit. Listen.
McNammera, Hatch, Smyth, Osbelt.

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