Along a once quiet road now
busy with the bustle of people
in cars heading here, there,
(where ?) and on the other side

a railroad track, not used often
but often enough for a rumbling
roar loud enough to wake the
dead, is, squeezed between the

two, a triangular-shaped, small
cemetery from a rural past.
The monument dealer wanted
to be buried there for reasons

never specified to the children.
So, his body was placed there
under a small headstone of
Swedish Granite. Then the

man’s wife thirty-some years
later — together, side by side,
bodies which in life were never
particularly comfortable side by

side. The children don’t visit.
They live in other states. Then
for another, the ashes of his
wife were spread in an inland

sea where she loved to swim. He
visits often wandering along the
shore letting the surf slap his
feet. It is as if he is being

anointed with precious oil. He
inhales the fragrance of the
fresh water, the sand and the
west wind and walks on. That

man and his wife have
decided to have their ashes
spread in the dunes where
they love to hike along the

shore. Their children will visit
every summer as they did year
after year and they will walk
along the shore, look up at the

dunes and the trails and out at
the water as it slaps their feet
and they will breathe deeply of
the fresh water’s fragrance.