Standing Stones II

Like you might label
peas, carrots, and beans
freshly seeded in
the rich brown earth
to know the plant that
springs up in its season,
these standing stones denote
the seed of man
sown corruptible.
Here Charles Gray was cast to earth,
the dirt swept over,
patted down.
There Tillinghast, aged seven months,
was gently laid within the furrow,
watered with tears of bitter sorrow.
Near forty seeds I count within
this garden plot of broken earth,
the sower waits with patient care
down through a thousand winding years
as moss and lichen creep on stone
and entropy erodes the names.
He does not forget one errant seed,
and at his voice the curling bud will break
the soil to awake
the life within the ground.