Riker's Island by Diane Dehler

                                                                                                

Riker’s Island is a public cemetery in New York where

inmates and the destitute of the city are buried.

Riker’s Island

On Rikers Island a

sloping field is set

aside for cremated

remains of those poor

and banished. 

Who perish

without the

cost of a funeral,

without provision

of mourning.

It is here

the poorest

of poor are

buried. Where

there is no coin.

 Simplicity of

wildflowers

adorns this

somber

paradise.

Here

sleeps a

newborn child

never touched

or held.

His cry

was a voice

unheard; rain in

the eye of a

ruined flower.

Queen Anne’s

lace, royal

and proud in

its grief stands

upright.

His birth

was a red

poppy that

shredded and

burned.

His death a first

tragedy given to

his mother.  A first

cycle through a

season of fire.

The mother knew

his promise was only

of sorrow. Memory

cremated into bone 

and bleached.

Sad purity of

infants that starve

and die before they

open cornflower

eyes.

Poverty

so primal

and unselective

devours people

& countries.

Poverty

belongs as

much to earth

as bone and

wheat.

Sorrow lives on

Rikers Island,

with the first and

most tender ash

given to earth.

Diane Dehler

First published in Artemis Journal, Spring 2014