Once a year Decoration Day came,

a treat, just after tobacco setting.

Buried, his & her families, in different graveyards,

we drove around all Sunday afternoon

and took potato salad and bologna sandwiches

to eat in the shade. It was a slow day; 

they talked to friends and relations also visiting 

graves, taking jars of roses, peonies, and flags 

from home places.  Mother would recognize 

some of the flowers and know who had come

ahead of us.  They repeated stories 

about each person—grandparents, great

uncles and aunts, distant cousins—and who was related 

to the other, and to us. A few stories interlaced

their families a few generations ago, something 

they didn’t know before they married.  And stories 

included old neighbors they thought a lot of 

and their relations.  A dusty drive through gravel roads, 

we drove 50 miles or less from home 

but it seemed a foreign country.