Dried Grass Poem by Paul Reed

Dried grass in heaped stripes
Pulling at our feet as we walked,
Joyous dog chasing sticks
Under overhead branches forked;

A calm place, a safe place
Sheltering it’s histories and lives,
Away from the harsh light above ground
And the pain that life contrives;

People who had been born
And grew solemnly from the cot,
People who other people had loved
And others that had loved them not;

Would they mind our morning walk
Between and around their places?
Would they mind that we read their names
But had never seen their faces?

And just as the dried grass lies
In abandoned mounds and rows,
So they lie, cut down
Adrift from their earthly pose;

We left them there to carry on
Close neighbours but with no feud,
Their mildewed stone crumbling away
Under the hand of solitude.