Looking down on this dirt country road

From a copse of ancient walnut and oak

An old cemetery of perhaps thirty graves.

The rusty spears of an iron fence tilting

One way and then another like a legion

In rout; this place seems old as Rome.

Here the unremembered, untended lives.

Only my thoughts trespass on names

Never mine, and perhaps no one's now.

The only flowers here are two roses etched

In granite, the rain watering them away,

Yellow sorrel and purple nettle, white clover.

Barely-rooted stones lean down into the hill

That falls to the other side of the road, where

An orchard of apple and peach trees stretches

With their first flowers farther than I can see.

Soon they will come and harvest the fruit, leave

The fallen forgotten in the dark sacred ground.