Tombstone Fields

Scented candle flickered
On the coffee table.
What was there to create
When every hour or so
You were greeted again,
More waves than pleasantries?

You two loved making jokes
Of inscriptions to carve
On tombstones, to the point
Where you got the idea
Of buying a whole field
For a single person,

Only one tombstone not
A cenotaph parked
Over a patch of dirt,
One over a body,
The rest all the same,
Including the same name,

Date of birth, date of death,
But a different verse
Or epitaph for text,
A different goodbye—
Joke, aphorism, pun,
Fierce expostulation—

A whole graveyard that way
For the storyteller.
See the graves by moonlight,
Anything discovered.
The tidy rows of white
Rectangles how you’d like,

Exploded among all
The names, the passages,
The sorts of things printed
Or carved thousands of times
Over thousands of games.
The simple goal not to say.