I visited Annie Oakley's grave in February.
Of course there was nothing left of the starving girl,
sure shot, loving husband, last breath
of (what never was) the Wild West.
There's a plaque. There are ribbons. We
leave our dead flowers, as if their flesh
could find their way through soil, then unfurl.

My mother says the graveyards where she lived as a child
had no paths; no rows, no order, no markers.
The family simply remembered. 

Or, as she admitted,
stumbled around lost every year.
Terrified, she'd skirt the mounds that
marked unrelated ancestors’ remains.
It's disrespectful and bad luck to step on them.
There are a whole bunch more rules, but
she wouldn't tell me.

For everyone else I know, it's 
as if “dead” is another place, just between
two beats, two errant steps sidelong:
hold your breath and 
there you are.  Dead.  An unwilling
tourist caught black-handed and returned.
But the trip there is valuable,
everything worth learning hurts.
You can see this clearly from where we
orbit that city
rockets made of medals, rockets
that never land.