burial rites

Part of what poetry does is to give us the world around us seen with a clear eye, without judgement or preconceptions. You are stating just what is, but always with a foot in both worlds, always seeing the mundane in its place in the universal. In “The Earthen Cloak,” I was blessed with the hospitality of a Quaker friend who guided me through a hidden graveyard deep in the woods, where Friends had chosen to be buried under trees and amid rhododendrons, leaving a legacy of their own love of the Earth. (It’s legal to be buried “straight into the ground” in North Carolina, without a casket but often with a shroud.)