Coyote, New Mexico, 30 September 2017

I hadn't seen the last of them, those
Extraordinary roadside memorials, tragically
Numerous and extravagantly maintained,
All individualized, most colorful, many
Half buried in pots of fresh flowers.
The contents of an entire village cemetery
Were scattered across the roads of northern
New Mexico, I thought as I left Taos for Page
And on back to Zion. In Montana, discreet
Signs let the traveler know a white cross
Represented a traffic death at that location,
And throughout the state identical, standard,
Modest white crosses on steel supports
Marked the points of death. If two deaths,
Then two identical crosses, twins, sprouted
From a single metal post. Otherwise, nothing
Else identified the events commemorated.
But here, just two states away, everything
To do with roadside grieving had become
Wondrously effortful and personal.
In Coyote, less than two miles apart, two
Memorials on the same side of the road
Testified. The easternmost featured fully
Seven pots of living flowers, pink, white,
And yellow, well-watered, set on white
Gravel and bordered like a small garden
With a low wall of stones, under an unusual
Black cross, the upright barely taller
Than the cross bar was wide, purple letters
Festooning the structure with the name
And dates of the deceased. Papers pinned
To the top of the cross looked like letters
Or crumpled, multiple versions of INRI.
To the west, the next memorial went further.
The stone wall had been cemented and was
The exact size and shape of a man's coffin.
Flowers were planted to grow in it, pink,
Yellow, purple, and white, with a heart-shape
Bouquet of red roses festooning the head
Of the cross, while, this time, white stones
Ranged round outside of the coffin planter,
With a second, plain white cross at the foot.
What were the relatives of the deceased
Intending to convey by building that planter
Shaped like a coffin, all of good flagstone,
And filling it with repeated pots of flowers?
Humans were burying defleshed ancestors
Under the floorboards and in house walls
For at least as long as there were sedentary
Precedents, but what could be the point
Of a secondary memorial at the very spot
Of death, one not including body or ashes?
These garlanded cenotaphs, these warnings
To everyone else on the road that death
Was just a bit further down that same road,
Again and again, they were performing
Mysteries. Here lies nothing of the persons
Who died, except a proof that they were not
Forgotten. I worshipped, respectively, cap
In hand, each madness, and then I drove on,
Counting more crosses, considering mine.