Revolutionary cemetery (S. Philadelphia, PA.)
These
pink faded bricks would have much to say
Bordered
in plaster and loam. Black lacquered gates
always
locked. On the street i look both ways
This
landmark wall, easy even with bottle in hand
Buffered
in trees and ivy, no barbed-wire or glass
I
drop over onto the other side, begin my tour
Tall
tilted sandstone, washed-out like men
too
long at attention. Former minute-men
enlisted
for eternity, sleeping rough like infantry
of
any era, eroded from ten-thousand rains,
hurricanes,
blizzards, scorching heat
Mostly
men, white as their stones,
their
bones. Perhaps this was the Arlington
cemetery
of its day
A
dead cemetery as opposed to a live one
still taking applicants. America’s first war
in
this then just settled land between white
Europeans,
better integrated than historians
might
have us believe
The
stones endure, formal and still despite
shift
or angle, long and slender, riddled with
grooves
and gouges, names gone, dates . . .
historic sentiment
nil, another 200 years
they
will crumble, reduced to sand
I
open my bottle, a quart of Pernod, salute the troops,
join
Ben Franklin, lodged near the entrance. He’s star
attraction
here. His granite legible, his gate high
Not
one graffiti artist has made it in, to tag Ben or his posse
The
city seeps, teems, bleeds in all around. Traffic . . .
a
plane overhead, a gun-shot, siren, rap music
from
a car. I wonder what Ben would have made of it?
I pay
my respects to the bespectacled kite flyer
and
the rest. A drop for him,
a large
swallow for me, see what i may
before
returning to present day, where
i
have not been missed
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