Lynn Rowe - Catherine

The Eldest of Sylvia's Daughters
Lies Still in the Earth Below,
On the Edge of a Small Town Graveyard,
Where They Never Even Mow.

They've Buried Mostly Babies Here,
Whose Families Couldn't Pay.
My Mother Softly Tells Me,
As We Clear the Weeds Away.

My Mother Keeps on Speaking
And I Just Mutely Hear
The Same Short Sad Story
She Tells me Every Year.

The Girl Succumbed to Rickets
When She was Two Years Old,
Your Grandma was Heart-broken
And Could Not Be Consoled.

A Disease of Malnutrition,
You Don't Hear Much of Today,
Gave My Sister Intense Pain,
And Made Her Pass Away.

Long Before WIC and Welfare,
And Milk with Vitamin D,
There Was a Much Higher Rate
Of Child Mortality.

My Mother Has me Promise,
On Each Memorial Day,
To Find this Tiny Headstone,
And Clear the Weeds Away.

And So,
The Upkeep of this Grave,
Is Present in my Future.
And Little Catherine's Memory's Kept
By One Who Never Knew Her.

Lynn Rowe

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/catherine/