I can’t visit my graves in Indiana so I go with her.â¨
She can’t find the right road off Omaha St.---â¨
a cemetery with so many entrances---â¨
one for one kind of Lutherans, manyâ¨
for another kind, their headstonesâ¨
facing the other direction,â¨
way back behind all those Lutherans,â¨
the fenced Jewish cemetery,â¨
where I once found a Jewish Mason;â¨â¨
after three tries we finally take the roadâ¨
with the brick gate posts; there are the stonesâ¨
we seek: mother, father, pedimentsâ¨
overgrown, husband, on the next lot,â¨
a small weathered cross on a cordâ¨
hanging from the strut of oneâ¨
of the big potholders, with the potsâ¨
we fill with flowers; lying at the base,â¨
a new dog tag on a chain saying:â¨
“They’re all heroes.” “It’s my Willy,”â¨
she says. “He’d do a thing like that,”â¨
her other grandson having gone to war,â¨
now in the Green Zone. â¨
â¨I’ve only brought a big spoon,â¨
but I manage to dredge the grassâ¨
off her parent’s pediment,â¨
scrape the other, so they look cared for--â¨
which is all we wantâ¨
for our beloved dead---â¨
no matter how far away.
Peg Carlson Lauber, a longtime EC resident, has published poetry since 1963 and taught in colleges for 40 years. Her latest books are New Orleans Suite and The Whooping Crane Chronicles.