You hold my hand as I traverse the graveyard,
along the narrowing uncemented paths captured
by white ferns, sometimes in the cooling blocky shades
of ivy-draped tombs, sometimes treading the pencil-point
tips of pine shadows, unintentionally crushing three-leafed 
parsley saplings peeking out of crumbling sand stones.

In the aching loneliness of moonlight, when I stumble
towards a loved one’s grave, pricked by wild red roses
that have darkened like clotted blood, across black ants
swarming over the sticky pulp of a rotten peach, you
make me listen to the songs bubbling out of the holes
perforating the ashen earth around the gum tree bark.

When I toss through the darkest nights, a row 
of polished tombstones my fragmented bed, and only 
the low railing of stone crosses guarding me 
from the chasm, your steady breathing slows down 
the turmoil beneath my pallid face; you rub off 
the clammy soil of the grave till I can rise and wipe off 
the bone dust, emerging across the tracts of loss.