The Graveyard Poem by Dr Ronnie Bai

I was six or seven that summer when I lonely stood
On the highest point of the quiet crowded graveyard
Looking down the hillside upon the capering figures
In late afternoon heat of a group of young children
Restless on the fearful dusty road for my belated return.

From the back of our village a few hundred yards
Behind thick brambles on the undulating hillside
Was an unattended graveyard that sprawled against
The sinking sun, its silhouette looming in the west
Amid choking hot air of many a long summer sunset.

Gathering in some cool spot for an after-tea story,
The old people would warn us kids not to go astray
Up the hill, for many a ghost were lurking around
To drag children into dark holes underground,
Making us feel a rustling in the dark night air.

Whether that was true I had not the faintest idea
Though we had watched some occasional hearses
Arrive, with wailing widows and crying children
In darkly clad slow processions that did appear
Shorter upon re-emerging out of the graveyard.

Probably the boring bell of the summer holiday
Had sounded its long-awaited daring toll to me,
Or, as some would say, the heat got me balmy,
For I announced to my dumbfounded playmates
I’d saunter uphill to look for some wild rabbits.

Soon I found myself alone among the tombs
In various shapes, sizes, and states amid weeds.
Apart from a few newer ones, most were clay mounds
Almost flattened to the ground laying with leaning
Broken stones showing them forgotten and forsaken.

Under scarlet prickly berries and crimson viny melons
Which I was tempted to pick but for the devil’s blood
I indeed stumbled across some dark ensnaring holes
Of caved in urns of some sort into which I spat at
Octopods scuttling across the opaque rainwater surface.

In the scorching summer heat I did not shiver,
And I loitered around for more than half an hour
Before I ran down to my petrified cheering leaders,
Complaining about nothing exciting to see or do
Except juvenile throwing with bones at smirking skulls.

Overnight I became the village child king for a long long reign.
Though I did not dream of all the pretty girls as my queens,
They did blush and looked away on the road running into me,
And bold ones would stop to swap with me their comic books
And bigger boys would come and help painting my dad’s fence.

Over the shiny fence of an attractive property the other day
I told my wife that I saw a dappled cemetery leafily landscaped
And bid an immediate adieus to the agent willing to understand.
Now having dipped into the bittersweet of life and thereafter,
The graveyard I no longer hold as a veritable playground

Either to defy the supernatural or to show boyish manliness.
We avoid it as an unlucky place and pray them to rest in peace.