CEMETERY RIDE
 
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I like to ride my bike through Oak Lawn Cemetery at dusk after it's closed
       squeezing through the gap in the fence and feeling my heart beat faster
            as I race by the office knowing how embarrassing it would be at 55
           
to be arrested for trespassing, although seeing my name in the Police Blotter
      would liven up my dull reputation around town. Growing shadows of obelisks
            and angels reach across browning grass to snag the smaller gravestones,
 
pulling them into one grey monument. I don't feel haunted by lingering souls
      that once inhabited these names etched like smoke into polished stone
            or the pale crumbling bones beneath, but more amused that they hoped
 
to immortalize themselves with granite and marble. I don't even visit
      my own father's grave unless my mother wants birthday flowers planted                                               and I plan to have my ashes spread across some as yet undetermined
 
beach or mountain pass. But I come here, religiously. When I was a teen
      the cemeteries in town were the only place to be alone to smoke cigarettes
            or make out with Megan Slater or drink Colt 45's and ass kickers
 
with Dave O & Jimmy Jackens or lie back, a slab of granite as our headboards,
      and search for shooting stars or make up our own constellations or just breathe
            and listen to our hearts synchronizing beneath our narrow rib cages.
 
I think I copped my first feel in a graveyard beneath a sliver of moon like this one
      rising out of the oaks. I wish now for a graveyard reunion with all those
            thirteen-year-olds who shared the need to get out, to do something,
 
sneaking out in the night to bump against each other, desperate to claim
      the world as our own. As I pedal up the hilly paths startling deer venturing out
            as the shadows lengthen pausing for a what-are-you-doing-here? stare
 
before scampering off despite my assurances I'm just passing through,
      I love these neat rows, cut stones in green grass, small furled flags,
            all the names, the birth dates and death dates, the sloppier pattern
                                                                                         
of family mausoleums and Virgin Marys on the hills, the sound of my breath,
      the steady piston pumping of my knees, the whirring wheels. And
            as I stop for water by the Mill River, shallow now in August, snaking along
 
the cemetery's edge, I realize I want to spread my ashes from a plane at sunset
      over this very spot, falling like grey rain over some smooching teens or
            a middle-aged bicyclist looking up to the sky, saying What the hell is that?