Beyond the Grave

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Beyond the Grave

Dark the night midsummer’s invite,
to the childhood friends conspiring,
mischief in their hearts is rampant,
to the graveyard they are drawn.

Two they are in creeping whispers
through old gravestones in the gloom,
there beside ancestral sepulchres
they plan to build their secret fire.

So they lay the twigs and kindling,
pile thereon dry mourners wreaths,
bring the spark that splits the darkness,
shield the flame to spread and grow.

Now the bonfire springs up strongly,
flaring light upon boy’s faces,
sparking bright and raging higher,
insolent torch in the home of death.

While the heat sends creeping feelers
Through the earth it seeks the tombs,
Warms to wake the sleeping corpses,
Eyeless sockets glow with rage.

Thus their rest so interrupted,
drawn to warmth above their beds,
seek the cause of their recall,
rise as visions in the flames.

There the faces long forgotten
writhe and wrestle in their pain,
See the youthful perpetrators
eyes agog with fear and dread.

Ghostly fingers stretching forth,
the dead receive the young boys’ souls.


Line count: 30
Trochaic tetrameter unrhymed
For Dark Dreamscapes Poetry Contest, August 2021
Prompt: As per illustration.