When I Learned That a Grave Is a Garden

When I learned that a grave is a garden
Of death-bleached bones that flower into
Ivory stems and marble blooms,
An estate of spidery blossoms and
Picked-clean fruit, indifferent
To the sun and growing;

When I learned that a graveyard is an orchard
Of sapless limbs host to silvered lichen and
Brooding moss;
Each grave a garden of scentless buds
No bee disturbs,
Nor animal forages,
A wild plot of ground never harvested;

When I learned a grave is a fertile plot
Of skeletal memory and marrowless mist,
Watered by grief and tended through time,
I laid down in the soft soil to fertilize
Eternity.

Deborah Sage lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She has been published in Eternal Haunted Summer, Fairy Tale Magazine, the 2022 Dwarf Stars Anthology, Amethyst Press All Shall Be Well anthology for Julian of Norwich, Eye to the Telescope, Lothlorien Poetry Journal Ephemeral Elegies, and Aphelion among others.

Find more by Deborah Sage in the Author Index.