Beginning - End

What’s in a line? Just  a line ?
Separating the past  from eternity.
The beginning from the end…
Taking a shortcut through the graveyard,
past the regimented rows of memorials,
Mothers, Fathers, Sister, Brothers,
Children ,Lovers
All with inscriptions  to show the world their names,
their relationships,
Date of hatching  and despatching…
With  just a line between those  dates.
A line......
that represents their lives ,
their whole life,
but now reduced to a dash -a thin stroke -a bar!
A casual demarcation ,between what was, and what will be.
No one even thinks about words to replace that
Oh so casual stroke…..
But I think  about those lines….
Wondered who they were?
What lives they lived.
Were they creative? Passionate? Imaginative? Foolish?
Did they fulfil their potential and reach dizzying heights of self satisfaction?
Or maybe lived a life beset by poverty,
With uninspiring  voices surrounding them
Were they striving for acknowledgement?
Did they cry in secret  or laugh in abandonment?
A life well lived, filled with good intentions,
Or  maybe.. evil beyond comprehension?
A stone memorial  says nothing of that  life..
Just the minutiae, the trivial, the incidental
Enough to read quickly …
forget..
and  walk  quickly past.