Cornwall’s long-term Evergreen cemetery caretaker, Viet Nam vet, Richard Bruso, died this week.

In Memory of Our Sexton, Richard Bruso

Time for us to turn
the earth for you,
dig the muddy ground.

Plot a way around
the tall and toppled
stones. Let the wind

pay for the fenceline
deed. As good a spot
as any, to live

in this kind
of dug eternity.
Among the veteran

flags, stones placed
on top of stones.
Now your dates, engraved.

Words of where
you served for us,
survived a paddy’s

cemetery. Returned,
to lie with your buried
family (Did you dig

their graves, too?),
here with the best
view of Cornwall’s

spring-turned fields,
our orchards, apple-
blossoming.

Gary Margolis
Cornwall