Perpetual Care
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Mother tottered on her stick through stones,
through fallen leaves,
through long gone German names,
and Italian photos in weathered gilt,
up the hill on polio legs
to where Alice lay since 1950,
to where we haven't been in thirty years, and
peeled the sticker from the granite
telling us to call the Fairview Cemetery office.
Advising us about the benefits of
perpetual care for
the perpetually sleeping.
Mother said:
when I go,
throw me in the sea, and
let my can corrode in brine.
I want no stone, no marble frieze.
Wash in, wash out,
I'm gone.
Karen Tellefsen
kat2@mindspring.com