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Column 627

Oak Grove Cemetery

Intro by Ted Kooser
03.26.2017

How many Oak Grove Ceme­ter­ies can there be in Amer­i­ca? There’s one just a mile from my home. Here’s anoth­er, with a poet, Don Thomp­son, to show us around. Poet­ry thrives on sounds as well as sense, and the vow­el sounds in line eight are espe­cial­ly art­ful­ly col­lect­ed. Thomp­son lives in Cal­i­for­nia and his most recent book is A Jour­nal of the Drought Year (Encir­cle Pub­li­ca­tions, 2016).

Oak Grove Cemetery

Just enough rain an hour ago
to give the wispy dry grass some hope,
turning it green instantly.

This place has been abandoned,
the old faith overgrown, confused
by brambles,
and in these hard times,
its upkeep cut from the budget.

But we walk, soaked to the knees,
making our slow pilgrimage
among gravestones, speaking
blurred names back into the world.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Don Thompson, “Oak Grove Cemetery,” from The Cortland Review, (Issue 66,2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Don Thompson and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.