READ A POEM
In the Abolitionists’ Cemetery
Westwood Cemetery, Oberlin, Ohio
by Jim Garrett
Still me, August,
In the abolitionists’ cemetery
When a black-winged crucifix
Circles above
Alights at the dark edge of the pond
I hear the whole
Night of silence
And we, together, wait
For these mute to speak up again.
“In the Abolitionists’ Cemetery” by Jim Garrett, from Innkeepers of Shorelight. Finishing Line Press, 2011. Used by permission of the author.
Jim Garrett has taught literature and writing at an independent boys’ school outside Cleveland for the past 35 years. His three chapbooks of poems –
At the Five-and-Dime, Lavallette, New Jersey (2007),
Innkeepers of Shorelight (2011) and
The Sound of Water (2018) – were all published by Finishing Line Press.
WRITE A POEM
The Dizain is for those who can rhyme. Try this simplified version of the 10-line poem with 10 syllables per line, rhyming
ababbccdcd. (Or use Keats’ rhyme scheme in “
Ode on a Grecian Urn.”)