Three Psalms of Burial

1  Fog and lichen over time

broke the great mountains into pieces

carried down by tiny streams.

            And creeks joined rivers,

            and granite turned to soft kaolin 

            left in clay beds just below the rapids.

                        Worn hands dug it up, worked it

                        into pottery, inscribed and fired

                        into stoneware jugs.   

2  When night burials came,

circles of secret hands in the woods

stirred blessings into the dirt.

            They settled their coffins in the soft  

            soil of minerals and decaying leaves.

            They laid jars inscribed with poetry

            to remember their dead.

                        Above ground, stones from the fields

                        marked nameless these quiet places.

3  Even mountains and gravestones decay.

Even polished markers in churchyards

dissolve when fog soaks granite

and lichen sends threads into the cracks. 

            Even names engraved all erode. 

            But legacy lives in books of the dead,

            passed on in code to our heirs.          

                        May we stir blessings into soil

                        to grow green beyond our graves

                        when lichen covers rocks,

                        wearing away our names, leaving us

                        in quiet fields of the forgotten.                      

Alyssa Stewart believes that fiction is an invaluable source of truth. She is grateful for the storytellers who raised (and are still raising) her, played with her, worked with her, and live with her still. Alyssa is the winner of the inaugural Combahee River Prize for a SC Writer of Color presented by the Jasper Project, published in Fall Lines – a literary convergence, Volume X, and funded by the SC Academy of Authors.