Friends in Low Places

/ rothpoetry

Today I walked through the cemetery of my childhood

thinking

of all life stories encapsulated there.

Friends and neighbors

inscribed on theses stones;

A card catalog

of stories one can no longer check out.

Ancestries long buried in dust

some lost in time;

Yet the stones live on

calling for recognition from the living.

Today, as I walked

I remembered friends and neighbors

who shaped my life

with their smiles…

their words….

love shared…

I think to myself

“I’ve got friends in low places…”

I must be getting old!

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Today at d’Verse, Peter asked us to consider beginnings and endings in poetry. We are looking at how the lines flow and how endings are used to punctuate what we are trying to say. He gave us five things to choose from as we write our poems. I tried to incorporate some of these in my poem today.

  1. how and where to end that line 
  2. endings as quotations like The Golden Shovel form – where one poem quotes another 
  3. endings and beginnings – verse forms that loop and repeat
  4. underlining your endings, and
  5. surprise ending

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

This was inspired by reading Derrick Knight’s post: Return To Brompton Cemetery – derrickjknight

71 thoughts on “Friends in Low Places”

  2. A visceral response to the prompt, Dwight. Even in death, a person is not always forgotten. We cannot change the memories and how we had once made people felt, and that is how we impact someone. We leave behind a legacy through words, through thoughts, through always being there in hard times and offering a shoulder to cry on. In these ways, a person can never be forgotten. You describe this so well, especially when looking back to an earlier time you remember and comparing it to the present.

    This is beautiful and emotional. Your friends may be in “low places” but they live on in your heart.

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  4. Pingback: Friends in Low Places — Roth Poetry – M. O. AKINBODE

  5. This I find a wonderful poem Dwight. It reminds me of what my father in law once said, he was in his ninetees: All my friends have died. I’m getting lonely. ‘Friends in low places’, what great line that is. I sincerely hope that getting old doesn’t necessarily mean getting lonely. May it be consoling that the voices from under the stones keep ringing in ones memories.

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    • Thank you Peter! I am so glad this connected with you. I took the line from Garth Brook’s song Friends in Low Places! I am just on the edge of beginning to lose family members, some younger than myself. It does make one think! The memories from the stones did make me smile as I remembered the good times. Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment!

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  8. Fine piece Dwight. I was at a funeral a few weeks ago and started doing comparisons: this one vs the others I’d been to. When I was young it was a dark mysterious ritual – now it was familiar, and I was rating each for flowers, the eulogy, the post-event catering. Getting on indeed. 🙂

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  15. LOVE the surprise ending! When I return to the small town I spent my childhood, a trip to our cemetery is mandatory. My first teachers, my grandparents, parents, friends of our family …. I remember and pay tribute to all. Yes, I am old.

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  17. Dwight, this is a beautiful, reflective poem. ❤ I used to play in a very old cemetery in Whaleyville, VA, now a part of Suffolk, as a child. There was a gigantic Southern magnolia that we would climb and look out over the fields of peanuts, cotton, and tobacco. We read all the old gravestones. I remember a child's grave with a beautifully sculpted marble lamb. It was a peaceful place behind our church and beside our house. Graves were interspersed with beautiful flowering shrubs.

    When I lived in Staunton, Va, Our church held Easter sunrise services in a huge old cemetery there.

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    • Thank you so much for your wonderful reflections. It seems cemeteries hold so many memories. I used to play in our cemetery also. We had one huge stone with a narrow ledge that we could walk around. So much fun. So many memories!

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  18. A beautiful write, Dwight. I was reminded of a time when I walked through an old pioneer cemetery where my 5th great grandfather and many of family were buried. Thinking to read words at the bottom of the tombstone of an old uncle, I brushed back the grass to read “Think of me as you pass by, for you, too, shall surely die” ! I think I might have enjoyed meeting that old uncle. He obviously had a quirky sense of humor!

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  21. I love it when us bloggers inspire one another. You took Derrick’s cemetery to higher places! Your photo with the rainbow says so much! And your poem is so poignant! Thanks for your shared talent 👍🏽❤️

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  23. Goosebumps when I walk and see so many of those inscribed names and dates in stones. So sad to see them gone but their memories live on. Thanks for joining in and being part of our poetry community.

    Wishing you Happy Holidays!

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