Driving toward the river in the new autumn dark,

(carload of cheese and bread and plans, clean towels and swimsuits

that won’t be used, a guitar, a bike, assumptions and wine)

Winking lights ahead cast a curious spell on my watchful eyes,

Blinking from what I daylight know to be the country cemetery;

Solar lights, from dozens if not hundreds of graves,

Shine like Christmas and aim at the stars,

Guiding the way for a midnight picnic for the dead:

They spread tattered blankets in the grass,

Crossing bony femurs like unlit cigarettes and regrets,

They, the dead, hold chipped china cups of nothing, or less,

In the indifferent moonlight,

Remembering the ordinary;

Driving to work, singing along to the Beatles,

setting the table with turkey, potatoes, things unsaid,

feeling the wafer stick to the roofs of their mouths like doubt,

being tangled in sheets in love, in childbirth, in old age,

feeling their children’s heads rest against their shoulders (warm, alive)

while the fireworks burst above;

They watch the cars come over the hill,

Headlights casting arrogant, sure light on the cracked road,

Taillights fading to black;

While the deer stand in the ditches outside the oval of light,

While unseen cells stretch and bully, monopolize conversations and multiply,

While smokestacks exhale thin white smoke that ribbons dismissively across the sky,

While keys drop to the sticky floor and church bells chime;

And so they, the picnicking dead ,shove over, sighing, and leaving room,

While the great round earth pulls its black cape around to the other side.