Proofreading in an Ozark Cemetery
Stanley and I visited the old cemetery
on Chelsie Road. I’ve been pulling
ticks since we returned. That’s the price
I pay for walking under oak trees
and sitting on old Scott’s headstone
with my feet on his chest. One of the stones
has the date wrong. The stone carver
cut the day and the year on one side,
and then off a month, corrected it on the other.
The earliest markers are concrete, scratched
with a stylus, some letters capitalized, others not.
As an English teacher, I thought about rough drafts,
red ink, and revisions. One of the dead appears
to have died before he was born, but that can’t
be right, regardless of drying concrete.
Most likely, ticks plagued the editing.
The mechanics may be wrong
but the theme doesn’t change. The old timers
planted cedars and moved on.
Al Ortolani is a poet and editor in the Kansas City area.
You can see more of Al's work in issues 4.4 and 4.4 and 3.3