Trust Fund
Every year
you leave me money
tied to your grave
so I am forced to visit you,
sit with all you have done,
pick a daisy or two,
crush them in my palm,
and sprinkle the ground with dead flowers.
I say nothing,
let the wind through the trees do the talking.
In a cemetery
wind carries the voices of the dead
so that if you listen carefully,
you may catch a song or a whisper
playing among the leaves.
The wind tells me stories
of when you were a young man,
ones I have heard a hundred times before
and jokes I have memorized the punchlines to.
But the things I sit with at that graveside,
like bricks in my lap,
are all questions without any answers.
So I take the money
and leave you to tell the squirrels all your regrets.
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Mary Coleman is an artist and poet based in Portland, Oregon. She lived in New Zealand for 11 years, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Art and Design. A recent arrival to poetry, her work has appeared in Shine Poetry Quarterly. You can explore her visual and written work at http://www.fivebluemarks.com or follow her on Instagram @ehloaf.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 