High Prairie Cemetery
One fifty-eight,
One fifty-nine…
Where was that last steer?
She followed the draw
On up, on up,
Til the oaks dwarfed to shinnery
And her horse stepped from the brush
Up, into the tall grass.
Is he up here?
Better ride clear back
In that corner over the hill,
Just to be sure.
Getting there, no steer of course,
But in the next pasture,
A cemetery high up on the flat,
That cemetery with no gate,
A mile from any road.
She’d never gone in there.
“High Prairie” they called it.
Said it was old,
Many unmarked graves,
Back to the hardest time
When they settled these hills
Only cattle inhabit now,
And tried to farm the tiny upland valleys
Draining these treeless, rocky slopes.
Forgetting her search,
She let her horse go to the corner,
Climbed down and tied the reins,
Eyes never leaving that rectangle
Of ungrazed, unmowed bluestem,
Taller than the five-wire fence around it,
A refuge of plant life
In a place of death.
Climbing over the corner brace,
She jumped down into a cemetery
Nearly empty of gravestones,
Wading through a forest of grass stems
Each crowned by a late afternoon
Network of sun-edged seed stars.
A meadowlark rose in panic from the grass
Veering off into the wind.
She followed it toward a gravestone,
Leaned down closer to the shadows
Of lichen-covered letters
In the rough, white stone,
And read:
Tis a little grave,
But oh, take care,
For world-wide hopes,
Are buried here,
How much of light,
How much of joy,
Is buried with
My darling boy.
She read on:
Clydie B.
Born May 26, 1894
Died January 9, 1897
2 years, 7 months, 14 days
Taking in a deep breath, she thought:
They knew each day was a gift.
She saw her own children,
Their tiny hands at that age,
The feel of their small arms
Around her neck.
She looked at the inscription again,
Her throat and stomach tight,
How could his mother go on?
How could she ever leave this place?
She went on around the cemetery,
A ten-year old boy,
An infant, a one-year old,
A girl fourteen, one eighteen…
Only one adult—
A forty-one year old mother.
What happened here? she wondered.
This woman? All these children?
She watched the wind
Blow the grass at her feet,
Its patterns forming zigzag trails
As though tiny animals were
Tunneling past her.
Drought? Grasshoppers? Hunger?
Disease? Accidents? Loneliness?
How could so much pain
Have happened in this beautiful place?
They say it’s so hard now,
That the world has gone so bad
And there’s so little hope.
She looked at the last stone,
Two tiny hands laced in prayer
Carved at it top,
And she knew,
No, theirs was the hard time.
Annie Browning Wilson, October 1991
Used with the author's permission
