—Buena Vista Park, San Francisco

 

 

There’s no room for the dead

 

in this small city, nearly an island,

where we trade corpses for houses

 

digging up graves

and exhuming the bones.

 

You can die in San Francisco,

but you can’t keep the real estate.

 

On a path toward the hospital

gutters laid from headstones

 

names split from dates.

I visit to read fragments

 

cursive of another century

spelling out a memory:

 

Frances, loving Mother.

Many names I’ll never find.

 

They were turned to face the earth.

 

©  Keith Ekiss