Endings And Beginnings Poem by Patrick L Kalahar

It was an old Indiana road, but one
we had not travelled before.
On a summer-like day
even before the spring, the sky
a faded-denim blue
almost cloudless, and hawks
riding their draughts of air
seemed motionless, as if
imprinted on the sky.
The trees were still bare, but
they threatened green and
early flowers rushed their season
unfolding buds stretching toward the sun

In the distance, we saw a cemetery
on rising ground beside the road
small and overrun
with last year's wild growth
twisted and matted like unkempt hair
newly released from
last winter's hood of snow.
The graves were old—old as anything
created by pioneers in the Midwest land.
We walked among the gravestones and
deciphered, as best we could, the
worn and broken stones and
felt the lives beneath our feet
significant and full of meaning
as our own—and yet
with cameras in hand
we saw the possibilities,
quaint and picturesque, and
we composed these past lives
in verticals and horizontals and
contrasts of sunlight and shadow.
Shutters clicked and then we moved on
away from old and forgotten lives
down that ancient road that
for us was new with discovery
in the first moments of another life
and a dream of future adventure