Where the Dead Are Strangers

--Adele Kenny

        (After All Souls' Day by Jakub Schikaneder)

Past what we see, a river glistens with wind and sun. A bird rises above its wings and recedes into sky. Deer graze between stones where the forest is close, a tangle of underbrush and leaves. One tomb's shadow reaches into another's.

Eyes filled with burdens (so much to do), we come to this place where the dead are strangers—where there is no ache of ghosts—the wages of grief only scrub grass and weeds that call us to something beyond ourselves, something exact and perfect, more absolute than the earth.