Stalwart Sentries

On the drive to and from the cabin, we go past a scattering of small town cemeteries. In the Midwest the graveyards always give themselves away by the kind of trees planted there.

Stalwart Sentries

A willow guarded my childhood

backyard on the Dakota plains

with elms embracing out front.

On the edge of town a cluster

of cypresses graced the cemetery.

But less than a mile into the country

trees turned scarce as the land rolled

sea-like to infinity.

On Sunday drives to my bachelor-

farmer uncles, a group of graveyard

evergreens broke the horizon.

Landmarks on that ocean grassland

denoting burial grounds 

not unlike the one now holding 

my father and his brothers.

Hard for a young girl to contemplate

death; easier for her to dismiss

the soldier-straight markers fading

in the mirror.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor