A Misty Dawn
A Haiku Bouquet
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Rows of chiselled names
Marking dates of birth and death
Pigeons rest in peace.
Solitary urns
Bouquets of plastic flowers
Placed to never fade.
Gilded heartfelt words
All in loving memory
For our special one.
Tokens cast in bronze
Boots, boxing gloves and a cat
Capturing their lives.
Silence cloaks the graves
As mist drifts among the stones~
Sacred thoughts abound.
Beds of green gravel
Give hope for one last voyage~
Squirrel bounces past.
Thank you for reading. I went for an early walk before the town woke up, intending to follow the path along the allotment and then swing past the brook but a magpie drew me into the cemetery. Pigeons rested on the markers, cooing softly to themselves, and a squirrel bounced along the rows. Mist still clung in places, retreating in others.
My bench was in the Polish section, where men my age were buried shortly after the war. So many survived the fighting only to die later from their wounds.
Flakes of red paint curled from the bench, lifted by the searing summer sun but it served as a perch while I studied the birds and the names on the graves. How many of their daughters and sons did I know, how many of them had been friends? I’m at that age where conversations sometimes turn to who has gone.
I should have taken a photograph from my bench but it felt so peaceful there that I didn’t want to disturb it.
