Elizabeth Black
Ebenfield Churchyard

A shovelful of dirt strikes the casket.

He played golf one afternoon in May and the next day, was no longer.

It’s raining here on the prairie behind the country church he loved.

How does my gentle cousin not wake up in the morning?

Was it only fifty years ago, when dashing across a farmyard I stumbled, splitting my knee open, and he felt guilty because he won the race?

It’s raining here on the prairie behind the country church he loved.

The tent over the gravesite is of no use to me.


Ebenfield Churchyard, written 3 April 2011, is poem #37 in the collection Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems (Woodley Memorial Press, 2011), edited by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Poet Laureate of Kansas.