David Graham
David Graham’s most recent book is The Honey of Earth (Terrapin Books 2019). Others include Stutter Monk and Second Wind. He also co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns (with Tom Montag) and the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (with Kate Sontag). Individual poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies as well as online. He retired from college teaching in 2016, and now lives in Glens Falls, on the edge of the Adirondacks.
Sounds Like Singing
No one’s guilty in the old graveyard.
All are forgiven by the frost, the wind,
the long rains of spring. Every year
the woodchuck sits on this hill squinting,
then whistles a sharp warning
when the dead go wandering through.
All are redeemed by the clouds, their shadows
quick as thoughts across the trim grass.
No one’s singing much except some finches
who are just passing through. No one’s
listening, not even the dead children
who never glimpsed our century, or
the one before. All are lost, no one’s at rest,
because everything, even the calm air,
is just passing through. Shadows lengthen,
then shrink and lengthen again.
And the wind only sounds like singing.
