POINT BETSIE GRAVESTONE

Like those cement steppingstones made 
for Mother’s Day or just for fun and inlaid 
by little hands with colored glass, marbles,
and maybe the print of the hand itself, here
is a headstone made by the lightkeeper. 
It says, with stones in cement, “mother,” 
as if the world were that small. 
What lack led him to this lonely place?
What infirmity makes a man think, mother, here 
is your gravestone; it says mother, which is 
your name, isn’t it? I made it too heavy 
to lift into the car and bring to your body. 
This is the grief that can’t be carried, 
the imprint of parent on child that never leaves
and can’t move on. Here, by the lighthouse.

Calvin VanErgens is a Michigan poet whose work has appeared in Dunes Review, the Reformed Journal, The Purpled Nail, Ekstasis, Cantos, and The Tiger Moth Review.