Too Late
Lee Evans
I rambled in the graveyard late one day,
Among the tombstones and the monuments,
When I espied a shaft of granite meant
To honor all the family dead. I strayed
Toward it, threading past the stones that weighed
Upon the grassy earth; they slowly sank—
But not this stone, its shape an oaken trunk
Without its branches, petrified always.
And then, as I surveyed this to its tip,
I seemed to lie beneath that sterile tree,
Its pillar weighing down my fleshless hips
In paralyzed desire. I could see,
And yet my eyes were hollow crypts of bone
That yearned for you, toward the waning moon.