There are three graves in Texas
my father bade me keep,
beside the somber fencerow,
along the hillside steep.
They stood collecting dust
before I was conceived,
and yet my blood runs in the soil
Beneath the hickory trees.
I never held her hand;
I never saw her face,
and yet I remind him of the girl
who rests in that grey place.
She lies beside her siblings
in a stern and narrow row,
a sister and two brothers
that I will never know.
Their mother does not come here
for their mother is not mine.
Sawbriar would cover their gravestones
and grass and muscadines,
but for the ministrations
of calloused, sturdy hands
hardened by years and hardships,
and the working of the land.
Curved and iron fingers
trace the names craved in the stone,
and bristled lips swear softly
that they will never lie alone.
My roads may take me far from here,
far from the Lone Star State
to lands of steel and concrete
to an unknown urban fate,
but there are three graves in Texas
that I will not forsake,
and while I live I will come back
and a constant vigil make.
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