Country Churchyard. Poem by Barbara Mitchell

Under their blankets of old ruin are all that remains
and never-more seen, excepting with the mind's eye
ever-keen.
Simple to set the past free -
just summon the gaze to the inside and there, from some other age,
stalwart faces look back at me.
Out on the long peninsula of grey time
half-known shapes ghost down to a rendezvous in some other place -
or not; such belief may comfort or destroy
illusion, joy.
Me? I raise a timid hand but none turn back
and I cannot know where it is they go.
Following them through a history book
tells me how they used to look,
and how their time carved each shape from tender clay.
It keep forever the timbre of a voice -
the flare and gutter of a life.
Long hours I spend in search of kinship I cannot see, and yet...
in the unfamiliar is the knowing
that each eternal hallway of their dreaming bones
leads back to me.