Will the dead rest in peace on a stranded island of grass
and trees amidst a Gobi of striped parking? Big boxes built
to the edge of their oasis hawk televisions, computers,
golf clubs and hot tubs for needs they never imagined.
At the final trumpet blast they’ll want for nothing.
Gas stations and fast food joints flaunting signs of bright,
come-hither plastic stare across six car-clogged lanes.
Eighteen-wheel diesels rumble at loading docks in night’s
hellish glow of metal halide and high pressure sodium.
Theme park of mortality by day, gloomy after sundown,
this green smudge on the crisp geometry
of commerce can’t be good for business. Wouldn’t
this cul-de-sac of the deceased be happier in a green pasture
where the Lord still shepherds?
Slates, marbles, granites and sandstones are tilted and frost-
gnawed, rain-washed letters fading to anonymity. Besides,
we no longer tolerate names like Mathias, Octavius,
Phineas, Sevilla and Zenas. Mourners long gone, only
historians and hobbyists nurture an orphaned past.
The geography surrounding eternity is hardly what it was:
quiet tedium, hibernation of lusts. Forever is a vibrating
wire of sizzling electrons, just another restless place
in the neighborhood.