THIS AFTERNOON I walked over the cemetery to the oldest part at the back and higher where the weeds had been knocked down and the bare fieldstones on the slave graves looked like shoulder blades sticking up their names their birth their sorrows wrongs and work and wonder and words for it and mouths to speak minds to call back and look forward what they built and carried and knew what was in their pockets or whispered back at them with a smile before sleep and their names are in a register closed to me the stones are sticking up someone has cut the vines back and brought down the saplings sun and shade go by in turns birds fly over on their way not far to an unseen shelter when I hear the cars over on the road go by it sounds like someone's life slowly escaping