Cemetery picnic
Aviator
We’re not adorning a grave.
There’s no one here we know.
Held by waiting bones
rosary chains rust in granite crypts.
There’s no disturbing
the church dust and incense
caught when the coffin lid closed
and the prayers stopped.
Two cats fight a few rows over.
We try to take names from the stones
with butcher paper and charcoal.
The letters are too weathered.
The dead recover
the right to be forgotten.
Rain is making tea from our bones,
they complain, The river
like cold broth seeps
through our little kingdom.
A psalm made
from the burning sky for
You won’t think about
all the houses rooted in
Others, the ones with errant
hearts, never vanish into
Your flights have distance
but not the proportion of
Romance around a merely
plausible space between
What seemed like
a fabric of dry grasses
When finding the way to move on
became a concern, being
“Earnest flight always matters
when life leaves off.”
Lee Potts (he/him) is founder and editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. In 2021, his chapbook, And Drought Will Follow, was published by Frosted Fire Press. He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife, the last kid still at home, and two cats named Franny and Zooey. He is @LeePottsPoet on Twitter and his website is LeePotts.net.
