Today's poem is by Don Schofield

Mass Graves, Hart Island
        "Hart Island is the domain of the dispossessed, where the
        poorest and most marginalized citizens are laid to rest...."
                —New York Times, April 29, 2020

The unclaimed dead in their plywood coffins
sway a little as hooks and chains
lower them into long
muddy trenches; forklifts
stack them neatly. Soon billowing smoke
darker than night
descends over the island
as great earth-movers
cover the mass graves,
their only mourners
oily wavelets
lapping the shore
and one voiceless angel
who keeps circling this small,
treeless island
sinking under the weight
of a million unwanted souls,
her mercy, now and forever,
unspoken.

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Copyright © 2024 Don Schofield All rights reserved
from A Different Heaven
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission