Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back writer and poet Anita Campbell of the UK with “Country Cemetery in June,” one of our poetry contest finalists. Mourning a dead son, Anita takes in the ordinary sights and sounds of the cemetery on a hot June day. She notices the town councilmen talking about money, which is quite a contrast to the pastoral peacefulness of the scene.
“The horizon is full of sheep shapes/ Silhouetted against the violet sky./ The setting sun shimmers behind/ A curtain of floating seeds.”
Abruptly, there is a powerful shift in awareness.
“Suddenly I feel the earth move on its axis./ The circle of life unending, unstoppable./ Those beneath my feet move in their warm beds.”
Finding herself drawn more to the dead than the living, Anita hurtles toward a last line that haunts us even as it promises freedom from the pettiness and trials of human life. This line is delivered in resonant simplicity.
Anita crafts a stunning poem in terms of imagery, alliterative music, rhythmic phrase structure, and intention, memorializing a memento mori (remember you will die) moment. We are all part of the pattern of birth, life, death. Grief highlights the things that matter and makes mortal busy-ness tedious.
Read “Country Cemetery in June” in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, Vol. 7, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
“I was born and brought up in Scotland, whose music, landscape and history I still love. I gained my degree in English Language and literature and took a teaching diploma, after which I taught in secondary schools for 25 years. My pupils were from 12 to 18-years-old. From them and private reading, I gained a love and knowledge of poetry and literature…so much so that, after retiring, I began to write short stories and poetry. I have published two books of my poems. I am still reading avidly and belong to several writing/poetry/art groups. I have two daughters, one of whom lives in Florida.”