Scarborough Cemetery

Scarborough Cemetery

Scarborough Cemetery

Our thoughts, reflecting the fears that we suppressed,
turned our eyes to the road ahead and searched
the arc of bay to comment on fishing boats and weather.
Within a few seconds and words we passed the headstones:
marble and red brickwork that sea winds scourged;
forgot the three people huddled on the sloping headland,
heads bowed, as a drizzle started and stopped,
and dead flowers swept across the ditches like paper scraps.

Miles further back on the highway the sun had reappeared—
a dozen or more reflections on windows that caught;
but the wind had brought no quick flashes here:
only the spray of a thousand rivers to wash
the thoughts of three people down the graveyards of the mind,
to headlands not discovered, over landforms undefined.