Line of Crosses

Line  of Crosses

audio: Line of Crosses
audio of Geraldine Connolly's poem, Line of Crosses

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Line of Crosses

A line of crosses in a Montana field
glimpsed on an early morning journey,
appear, hand-hewn, many-sized, tilted.

Some are painted, some splintered,
staggered like soldiers’ rifles into dusty weeds.
Home-made crosses, boards planted

among the hay mounds, they’re things
to witness that take my mind from the green
squares of summer to bombed villages.

Let the lives they might have had
gather like a river, each boy emerging
to take his place in the world, cutting logs, fishing.

Not these boards and rusty nails. Not these
hand-picked flowers that float wrecked lives away.
Not this scattered row, its grim insouciance.