Memento Mori (The Abbey Cemetery)
Some cemeteries advertise a view:
The dead “look out” upon a trim expanse
Of hedgerows and, appropriately, yews,
Morbidity thus tempered by romance.
But poorer dead (or dead with common sense)
Suffice with rest eternal here and there
(My grandmother: right near the cyclone fence
Along a busy city thoroughfare).
These monks though poor are rich with wooded hills
And skies so broad and blue as to recall
The soul to something infinitely still
And beautiful: the Holy All in All.
And as I grave by grave the tombstone math
Place side by side with my biography,
I pray I might walk my remaining path
With greater faith, with grace, with ardency.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, Amethyst Review, America Magazine, and The Society of Classical Poets. He is a certified catechist with the Archdiocese of New York, a Benedictine oblate of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, and editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.
