Graves and Stones and Plaques

A poem that ponders on the use of headstones and markers for the dead.

Why do we do that, across the world?
We need location, place and pin.
A map of where you are unfurled
We need to find the box you're in.

How to walk such solem halls?
To close the hole they left behind?
To conquer life's most painful falls.
Remembrance is the place we find.

Maybe that slab of speckled stone
Is simply stiches for the soul?
To laugh at death, that wicked crone,
We think on acts, a pensive zone

It's in idiosyncrasies
Their laugh and how they filled their days.
That, I believe is the key
And not in where my body lays.

So I say, let me ride the breeze.
Keep me out from mortar's gloom,
Not under winter's deathly freeze,
But flowing out, in ashy plume.