In Winwick Churchyard
The gravestones are laughing. They tilt at each other’s shoulders, droll tears of lichen blotching their honourable faces. Seated in uneven rows in their auditorium they note church-goers squinch the gravel path to the embossed door. Some lean backwards in mock amazement, others forward, study the half-mown grass or slap their thighs, whisper behind their hands — only one stares in vertical — at man that is born of woman, a joke they refuse to explain. But the upright rectangle between the medlar and the lych-gate, marbled in its twenty-first century is excluded from the pleasantries, is bullied after lights-out by the listing seniors, its jar of wilting pansies the butt of scorn. A much missed mum and nan? Don’t make them lurch. Get real: become obscure.