Red Plastic Heart

Alone among the lichen

Have you decorated graves?

Many cemeteries look

Almost like birthday parties,

Bright flowers and mylar balloons

Bobbing over the headstones

On a windy winter’s day.

What happened to the lichen,

To letting them grow over

And slowly digest the stones?

Well, what’s happened to the stones,

You might retort, graves going

Out of fashion here and now,

This age of urns and ashes.

The single body interred

In its own casket, its own

Rectangular resting place,

Its own plot, is getting rare.

No ritual long endures—

The centuries placing flensed

Skulls of kin under the floor,

Of leaving them on scaffolds

As alms for the birds, are gone.

The cemeteries will go,

But some lichen will go on.