Headstone with Harvest Images

Headstone with Harvest Images

Flat at last, the grave finds antiquity
can be postponed no longer, and yesterday,
or last week, or that intricate winter

before the war, is past, all past,
with no gap between late and early.

There is comfort in the shape
of stone: the outcropping, dark marble

like a spoon, a solitaire set
in a ring, or an errant reference tab
referencing this single thing.

Dear wilderness, last night I dreamed
of an electric slumber,

a humming, buzzing kind of sleep,
poorly suffered, and this inscription is a wish
and a lie about peace,

which sits impossibly beside
engraved vines and wheat, and must
plod on beyond these oxen.