SHE CRIED HERE
It was not a long trip A little over an hour Through the countryside Fields and farms For me it was a nice drive Through the country But for her it was so much more
For her it was going home Coming home A phrase I only understood Through what it meant to her Home was ever in her heart
And often in her words
Once there We would make a quick run Through the old, dying town By the house where she once lived Past the burned remains of the house
Where her favorite aunt taught her the joy of books We drove past where there once was a bank A store and a post office But now old crumbling concrete
Is all that remains
A quick turn took us back to the highway And down the road a ways
To pull in under a huge old oak tree In front of the old white church Maple Springs
We got out of the car and slowly headed past
The old church to the field beyond
Where we walked among the stones Careful where we stepped The silence broken by the buzz Of grasshoppers as they flew away And twilling of the meadow larks
As we walked We read the names and dates Written in granite Until we got to the stones with names That were written in our hearts We didn’t talk much then But always stood there for a while And let the memories speak to us Feeling the pull from loose ends left with their passing
Sometimes we would pull a weed
Or touch the cool surface of a stone
And wipe at our eyes
Later we would wander a bit Looking at other names Sometimes new names Names of her childhood friends
No matter where we wandered She always came back a certain way It was not obvious But it was always the same She took care to seem like it was nothing Nothing special Just another stone in a field of stones But she always walked slowly past
And sometimes wiped her eyes Past the stone That read “DIED IN DEFENSE OF HIS COUNTRY” With a date from World War II His name meant nothing to me And I never asked what it meant to her But every time we walked past She cried
Michael F Mathews
01-12-04
It’s not home
Boca Raton, TX
12:13 PM
Monday
And now when I go visit her resting place, just yards away, I go by that stone like she used to do and for some reason, it makes me cry, too. 12-17-04
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