Friendly Dust

Beneath the western shadow of a church

So still forever I shall rest and dream.

I shall not see the waving of the birch

Nor smell the locust blooms beside the stream;

But I shall hear, through hidden lines that spread

From grave to grave beneath the rich dark earth,

The kind words that my grandsire would have said,

The gentle welcome, and the ancient mirth

of ancestors whose ways were not my ways,

But whose stout hearts sent on a chart to guide me.

All through the endless lengthening of days

My heart will hear the words of those beside me.

Our dust will mingle, hid from mortal view;

My forebears, and the child they never knew.

~Aletha