Sarah Wallis

            We walked miles, searching out a definitive 

            signpost, like Land’s End, 

            John o’ Groats, or Dover; the end of the line. 

            Superstition kept us walking, staring down 

            magpies as we looked for omens on the grassy path, 

            twisting, turning between the neat lines of dreamers, 

            reading their dramatic lines of poetry and strong 

            Bible verses standing guard, the winged angels 

            and Gothic letters steadfast, meant to last, to always 

            point the way, Here Lies Mary Beloved of George ... 

            and everyone would know, there was Mary, 

            there she was, and – lucky her – she had been beloved. 

            But where were you? Your blessed stone had been 

            set, you were beloved too – but who could know that, 

            since the words were spirited away ... 

            We saw no one that first time, felt we were dreaming 

            too, as you didn’t seem to be there – somehow lost, 

            amongst the lonely headstones of the long since dead. 

            The second time we saw disturbed earth, new graves 

            appearing, fresh flowers laid. The third time the vicar 

            showed up, sacred gardener, muddy and penitent, amen. 

            We decided on a new stone. 

            But once they were digging to set it, like archaeologists 

            amongst the angels and the flowers, 

            they hit upon something hard – the artefact – sunken 

            down in its flowerbed and entered into a pact of hiding 

            the past, as you always did, 

            and the terrible warstruck

            things in it, a shadow 

            reluctant to bring too much reality into the light. 

            After much discussion, the man with two 

            gravestones, thirty years apart, would share 

            his signpost and the shiny, proud, Portland 

            stone took precedence, standing for the two of you; 

            husband and wife, reunited in death. The older 

            of the two stones rides around in the car with us now, 

            a grumbling presence, commentating on the driving, 

            and crashing around in the foot well, side to side 

            as we sit out the corners – until someone 

            with the strength to do it can move 

            the artefact again, perhaps to sit quietly in the garden 

            by the birdbath 

            or under the twisting grapevines waiting to ripen.