We still rest up here. Up on this hillside of stone, where those around us are also held as if in bondage, where time is the keeper, and the soil has pulled our hearts away, leaving us here, together.
Many of us were family, the ages about the same; the men grew tired of pulling these plots, with pick-axe and shovel, with half a spade of rock and the other half soil. Each one smaller, each one, only half the height of the men and women, whose backs were bent in grief, as they wrapped us up in mommas fine cloth, and daddy's freshly hewn box, and pulled us up with buckboards and labored horses to this hill, where we could rest, forever rest, and see the miles below us.
1891 to 1896, each grave was dug, each family made, these stones which carry our names, the day we were born, the day we died the earthly death, and began our living once again. The ground has swelled, and shrunk, the burnished wood has dissapeared with time, three centuries are mangeling the carved names from these markers, as those were were buried here last were the children's grandchildren, and double greats of those who carried us up the deep sweep, through the foul mud and to the top of this sad little hill.
The roundest little peak, two trees that grew among us, with sites to see all around.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Outside of Bernice Oklahoma, through the cut dirt, across the damp soil, and up the tall hidden hill.
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