My poem, Graveyard, was just published by Persephone Literary Magazine. Here is the poem:

Graveyard

They laid it out on a rise
too steep for draft horses.
It’s a lonely spot—
but aren’t they all.

Headstones scattered
over the two acres
like chess pieces
placed by a child

who barely knows
the game.
The oldest
from 1828

is worn and blackened
by Pennsylvania winters.
But the graves
are well cared for.

We walk the paths
browse the headstones.
Names are repeated—
farm families,

I suppose,
from a few miles about,
and I wonder
what it was like

to live here
in the 1800s.
We find your name,
birth and death

on a metal marker
near the top of the rise
as if you too
were just visiting.