AT NIGHT IN THE FORT JONES CEMETERY, by Lara Gularte

AT NIGHT IN THE FORT JONES CEMETERY

When the night doesn’t wish to be darkness,
the distance that divides the living and the dead closes in.
A letting go moment, and her lantern lifts her ancestors into light.
Voices call from the dirt, rise into the air of the living.

They are all here, gold hunters, ranchers,
Great Grandma Neves, Father Fernandes,
Great Uncle Manoel, shot dead over water rights,
Aunt Armena, still born from her mother’s womb.

When the dawn’s changing light opens the graveyard,
she holds on to what she can’t let go of-
watches those who came before pass-through branches of old trees.
and in parade formation, vanish into sky.

Lara Gularte