Resurrection

There is a section in the Hastings Michigan Cemetery where children who died during or before birth are buried. This area is at the back corner, on a ledge overlooking the Thornapple River. Years ago, during a spring flood, some of the graves were lost to the river. This poem comes from thinking about those children and my own mortality. 

Bury me with the children who died prematurely and are planted in 
simple graves, at the back of the cemetery, far from the gaze of 
the mourner, ‘cept broken-hearted parents.

Bury me under a huge sycamore, whose broad leaves 
shade the ground in summer and white bark appear 
ghostly on a foggy morn.  

Bury me where the stream makes a sharp bend, its swift 
waters carving into the bank.
There, I can hear the river’s call as it rushes past.

Bury me close to the ledge where, in a few years or maybe a century, a 
spring flood will free me and those kids, and I’ll lead them on a grand 
adventure.

In our box boats we’ll shoot through the gates of the Middleville and Irving dams, 
forgetting the dangers, for they no longer matter to the dead. We’ll laugh as we catch an 
eddy below and float in circles.

At Alaska, the village-not the state, we’ll shoot the rapids and when we 
meet the Grand, we’ll chat with those fishing for salmon and wave to the 
pedestrians on the bridges at Grand Rapids.

I hope it is night, with waves breaking over the piercing lighthouse, when we leave 
the river at Holland, for the lake. We’ll float slowly, watching the lights on shore 
fade from sight as we navigate by the north star. 

Time will slow as we slip from one lake to another and over those falls at 
Niagara that terrify all but the dead, before making our way into Canada 
and down that great waterway.

And years later, if our wooden boats hold up, we’ll slip out the St. Lawrence and 
into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, along with icebergs, riding the Gulf 
Stream as it heads north and then east and back south.

We’ll bed down with wintering puffins and watch whales play 
as they ply the sea, while we pass
Iceland and the Faroes, Scotland and Ireland, and on beyond the Azores.

Bury me with the children, in the back of the cemetery, and 
in time the river will call, and we’ll float to where peaceful 
waters gather.


Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash