One Shade The More

One shade the more,

One companion the less;

A multitudinous mirror

Of reflected memory.

In perpetuity to store

One more face;

To recognise, to refer

In the album chronology.

A silent flitting shadow

Finds the darkened crack

In the mirror of the mind;

Stirring nostalgically.

Leaves disturbed anew

Fail to bring back

The light and sound

Atmospherically.

People once bound.

No longer found;

No longer around;

Confound.

A glance of shades;

Fading friends;

Greying grades

Of ignorance.

Ivy clinging stone

Informs the shade

The more alone

That there be laid:

In innocence;

In transience;

In abeyance;

In absence.

Wooden Memorials

Now wooden seat replaces stone,

And brass plaque replaces bone,
While somewhere smoke billows
From a chapel amid the willows.

Folk go up in smoke instead
Of being gently put to bed
In kindly earth where trees
Once surrounded to please

In seas of stone tombstones
Amid quiet where 'phone
Is neither seen nor heard -
Just the trill of a trim bird.

Ah, but that is yesterday
When memories grey
Were stone and bone
And death was not alone

But comfortably asleep
With others to keep
Away the outside world
While memories unfurl.

Made of wood and brass,
The new graves, alas,
Contain not bones of yore,
But someone's posterior.

What strange sort of folk
Prefer to go up in smoke
And replace cemeteries
With wooden benches?

Not me, that's for sure;
Where I'm heading for
Is made of solid stone,
And I shall not be alone!