Revisionist Poetry – “Epitaphs in Stone” – Ghostly Stones, v.2

Ancient stones of marble and granite
stand half-upright in their weathered rows,
raised to remember,
so often left behind.
Sun bleaches their faces;
rain stains their names;
traffic and time
work together to soften the edges.

Their surfaces carry the hand of years,
not gentle, but patient,
as if memory itself
had worn grooves into the grain.
They keep watch over what is buried below,
over the bone-dark quiet
and the names that still remain
inside the stone.

Once they were polished, tended,
their lettering sharp as a fresh wound.
Now they lean, cracked at the corners,
spidered with moss,
yet still they insist on presence —
on the fact of a life,
a love,
a loss,
a date that once mattered to someone.

Most pass them without reading.
But for the one who pauses,
who runs a finger across the carved line,
the stone begins to speak:
not loudly,
but faithfully,
as things do
that have outlived forgetting.