Louisiana Graveyard: A Ghazal by Cordelia Hanemann

Stone-gray cherubs, pocked torsos, mocked by time, glare at nothing.

They sit on graves, pluck soundless tunes, blank eyes stare at nothing.

I come home to touch the stone, to know if the frame still holds,

Pilgrim among the clutter of crypts utterly aware of nothing.

Head-stones angled against time and weather stand askew,

as though to ask what happens when the structure fails and there is nothing.

Darkness belongs to the dead, the weary weight of earth and toil,

yet corpses defy repose, resist decay, tear at nothing.

Ghosts rise to moon-tides, slip out through cracks in old mortar,

borne away by soundless voids, tangled with a share of nothing.

Riffs of hot summer lives on front porch swings and sultry sleep:

the jazz of souls striving through syncopations of time aware of nothing.

Wind whispers secrets through hanging moss, egret wings, hum

of mosquitoes connecting desire with everyone's need somewhere in nothing.

I send my prayers through heavy air, tufts of moss rooted

in rifts of brick and marble to keep the dead there in nothing.

The rush of traffic, whine of tires, crimson sound of sirens

answering unknown urgencies, a jazz of noise: a care for nothing.

Cordelia Hanemann, writer and artist in NC, has published in Mainstreet Rag, Connecticut River, Red Rose, and Laurel Reviews; anthologies, Well-Versed Reader, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. She has won poetry prizes [Sable Press], been featured poet [Alexandria Quarterly] and been nominated for a Pushcart. She is working on a novel about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.