I was helping out with some DIY work on a house in this part of Scarborough and was impressed by the friendliness of the people and the general environment around the cemetery.

At the Door

 

Dean and Manor Roads carry stories

from the town’s grey streets, names,  numbered doors,

thresholds where you linger with polite hellos.

Inside the cemetery, green paths lead

to rows of slab gravestones,

doors to some other space.

And the old fading ones, difficult to read,

hold you longest there as if they, most of all,

had not quite finished saying goodbye.

 

Stuart Larner

first published in Scarborough Review, September 2013