Vandalism, perhaps,
but not always.

I have stood alone and quiet,
in the filtered sunlight
beneath the old trees,
listening to the sighing wind
and the chattering of birds,
and heard a gentle thud.
A gravestone just topples over
and lies there cracked
on the stubble of grass.

After nearly 200 years,
“Abigail, beloved wife of Josiah”
steps out of line and falls over
beside her upright peers –
all those others, standing straight and stoic,
quiet and resigned, in their sandstone rows,
friends, neighbors, family members.

“Mary, beloved wife of Josiah…”
who preceded Abigail in life and in death.
“Jane, infant daughter, much mourned.”
William, son of Abigail and Josiah,
lost at sea in the 18th year of his life.”

What restless yearning was disturbed
that upright obedience of this stone?
What longing – to see yet one more
sunrise on the bay? One more look
for the ship that has never returned?
To hear the men boasting and laughing
as they mend their nets?
Or to see the children dance
once again down to the wharf?

An afterthought perhaps,
one final point to make
in the women’s call
for justice at Sunday meeting?

What unfinished dreaming
now demands, after all those years,
another moment of life?