All Souls Day

Fallen leaves,
their delicate ghosts
winding away on the wind,
danced down to the sidewalk.
Shades of brilliant loss
colored the lifeless ground,
trod under foot like bones.

On All Souls Day,
the congregation wrote names on
tent cards, silently shuffling to the altar.
They built a tiny cemetery
for the rarely remembered,
covering the empty parament
with pencil-scribbled grave stones.
Later they talked over lunch
as their efforts were raked into
a plastic bag.

At the funeral, my aunt patted
my grandfather's suited chest,
never hearing the hollow thump.
Someone had put his glasses over his eyelids
like spray-painting flat green on
fallen leaves.