Anglican Girl

A gravestone caught my heart.

Anglican Girl

                                                          Old Hull, Quebec. August 19, 2006.

Anonymous "Anglican Girl
Who died of the Spanish Flu",
Do you mind if I talk to you?

How could they know your religion?
Perhaps this churchyard was near,
So they simply sent you here.

One more corpse on the trolley;
No one to recognize you;
Just a young girl felled by the flu.

(Remember the Black Death?
Remember the Great War?
The  Spanish Flu killed more.)

Do you find that time hangs heavy,
Down there all alone
Under a nameless stone?

A few brief years of daylight,
Then ninety more in the dark
Beneath this mournful park.

Did anybody love you?
Did you feel it to be so?
A child needs to know.

Sitting here so still,
A sparrow lands on my knee;
Cocks an innocent eye at me,

A look that moves my heart
The way a child might do
-- A child just like you.

Compassion is a stranger,
But these tears are true:
A gift to me from you.