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To Where It All Began

Mother Nature has all but consumed 
Their little graveyard by the sea, where
Sands bleached white, slide 
Across the cemetery floor
Drifting like pale capsized hulls
Floating between tablets marking
The long forgotten dead

It was here, fifty two years ago that
I held my Grandfathers weathered hand, 
More so for the want of a brace
Than the sympathetic touch of a Grandchild
My little hand lost to the wrist, gripped
By a generation lost to the elements

I watched him kneeling by their angled stones
Tracing their names; first his father’s father, then
The mothers, with a finger crooked by age 
The sandstone letters crumbling in the wake of his trace
Grit sifting through his heavy fingers; history, being erased
Returning it back – to where it all began

I followed behind his shuffling shoes
Kicking up dust that settles on the bones of ghosts
My Grandfather’s voice lost to an ocean breeze 
Is he speaking to the dead?
Whilst our shadows lengthen, then dwindle into dusk

I imagined, back then as I do now
Of a graveyard full of pirates and thieves 
With their ship resting - just out there
~	At sea
But for the stout chimney and hearth, beyond the grounds
Baring testimony to pioneers that
Once toiled this barren coast and now
Standing defiant, resolute against the 
Advancing flotilla of sand

He is buried just beyond the little graveyard
My Grandfather, next to my Grandmother
On his farm; or
His father’s farm before that
My farm now…
On a hill
Overlooking the sea, where it all began






8 Dec. 2014

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