Maree H. Anderson – 26 April 1988 – 23 December 2005

Loving friends bury their dead
Archaeologists exhume the bones.
How strange, as down this path I tread,
To find myself in the shoes of both

Through a grey stone city I walk
Houses up to my knees
Cities of Dead, where wraiths skulk and stalk,
I’ve journeyed to countless of these

But Darkfield Cemetery lets down its name
Like you, it’s not as it appears
Its shifting reality with my mind plays a game
Have I wandered here minutes, hours or years?

A scientist first and foremost
I’ve brought my spade to dig up the facts
I know in my bone there are no ghosts
Yet I feel I’m trespassing on these tracks

I pass by the grave of Julina Zephyr
Its pinwheels spin in the breeze
China ducks in straw hats beadily peer
And cherry-blossom floats from the spring-laden trees

The next door asylum leans over the fence
Guarding you even in Death
Visiting you in its walls I felt nervous and tense
But you said it restored to you Life’s own breath

I doubted the tales you told me
Of ‘a sanctuary for those of a different brain’
I thought you made up friends, invented stories
I believed Quacks who said you were insane

But to my right is the urn of Hamish McPhee
Who you said made laughs split your sides
His wife chatters to him whilst raking leaves
Holding back autumn’s red and gold tide

You voice calls me down overgrown paths
Just as last night it pulled me from bed
Your smile at my window shone out of the dark
Made me question, are you really dead?

I could not face attending your funeral
So I have no hard evidence
Whether you rest at peace in the soil
Or are spying on me through gaps in the fence

On my left is a flash of your favourite red
But it’s just the buds on a red summer rose
Its roots hide the brass plaque naming who’s dead
Perhaps he’s not, so long as it grows


TO BE CONTINUED...