poem

 Calvary Cemetery

There’s a cemetery on the way to the Midtown tunnel

From LaGuardia that caught my eye 

So I looked it up when I got home 

And I think it’s called Calvary Cemetery.

According to Wikipedia it has the largest number

Of internments (nice way to say corpses)

Of any burial grounds in the country. 

It’s just enormous. 365 acres.

A lot of the headstones were sort of thin

And tall and tilting, mimicking in miniature the skyscrapers 

Jutting from the island behind them.

I can’t remember if this is metonymy or synecdoche

I'll have to resort to analogy or smile:

Envisioning an old photo in black and white—

A child playing with toy soldiers on the front porch

While daddy embraces his beautiful wife before he marches off to war.

Only here, the cityscape is a make believe

Game passed on from generation to generation

While the toys are the real thing

Sent across the river to an exile far away 

Meant to remind the boys

Of the blessing it is to play

6/1/25