sweet auburn | 2024 volume i
Cemetery Praise Song : April
By Carolyn Oliver , Mount Auburn Cemetery Artist-in-Residence ( 2023-2024 )
Photo by Benjamin Oliver
Praise slow re-waking : anemone and periwinkle , hellebore and squill . Praise the colorwork , briefly brilliant , of iris and muscari . Praise magnolia ’ s first suggestion , slightest pink . Praise the daffodil girl , who asks to see the sphinx . Praise friends who survey secret paths , who climb up pinnacles , who sound out strangers ’ names . Praise their parents , who mind and marvel . Praise a single turtle ’ s calm detachment , a pair of mallards squabbling . Praise the desiccated toad ’ s unfinished crossing . Praise the chapel ’ s stained-glass light , mosaic as it breaks . Praise oaks , the oldest residents , and their companion lichens , perennial to the end . Praise the annual generation of omnipresent robins . Praise blackbird song , rusted hinge recalling what it means to open . Praise the quiet that is not silence resuming after sirens . Praise wordless tributes : ring of broken shells , birch-striped pebble , sturdy sticks for fetching . Praise preservers who by their labor honor the work of other lives . Praise the night one rain-fed pool calls down spotted salamanders from the tombs . Praise the mourners , who also live among the dead . Their spade-bright griefs . Their griefs like settled stones .
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