I find your epitaph engraved
in a limestone monument,
picketed by a lush green ring
of tall thin cedar pines.
A poem fragment eulogy
etched beneath your name
sends you deep into the dark
to greet your long dead love.
Your kindred and your ancestors
lay feet to every wind,
as if to guard in rest the names
engraved at every head.
A simple headstone marks your plot
a few feet to the north,
your shortened name embossed atop
the pale plutonic spar.
I read your epitaph out loud
and feel a dizzy spell
pierce my sense of thought and sight
with heavy shades of light.
The only gift I have to give
are little bits of song,
and so I sing your words to you
and to your buried love.
Three thousand miles, and here I stand,
uncertain why I came
just to sing your words to you,
to touch your graven name.
A soft wind fans the cedars' scent
across your plots of earth;
two giant white oaks, east and west,
sentinel your peace.
Flies, mosquitoes, beetles come
to search my searching eyes;
a near-white caterpillar scales
the letters of your name.
Around your monument I stroll
and play my bamboo songs
which echo down across the stones
that mark a thousand graves.
The bamboo echoes fade away;
I thank you for the gift
your inspiration gave to me
for years, and years to come.
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