Laid To Rest Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

I dig through the dirt reminded of you.
Solitude has a way of planting doubts,
of shifting shadows in my field of view
until the attic caves within my house.
So much stillness, such desire to be heard,
words are a river on a silent tongue.
A poem, a promise, a blithe bluebird -
such are the leads of the innocent young.

We are the ashes of a burning fire,
but we were never what we might have been.
A contrivance, a dream, a myth and mire -
we will never be together again.
I bury my past in realms of the dead,
an emptiness deeper than any space,
placing chrysanthemums over each head,
over the smiles of each forgotten face.

I have a graveyard within my bones.
Half a heart hangs in a quarry of stars,
and memories gleam over broken stones
within this cemetery full of scars.
Sometimes the silence swallows whole the sky.
Storm clouds gather in the darkness depressed;
and sometimes, I hang my head and I cry
over unspoken things I laid to rest.