NEOSHO/COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY
"The cemetery was my playground"
—Cheryl Unruh, "Remembering the Dead," Fly Over People, Emporia Gazette
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Short, brief, epigrammatic—
reminding me of Edgar Lee Master’s
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
Visiting my mother Amy’s grave—
grandparents Larkin’s graves there in
Memorial Lawn/Maplewood Cemetery
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Those same nostalgic, lonesome—
heartache feelings for those we once
knew so well and loved so much
Emporia has grown way out past—
the cemetery and the flagpole where
Memorial Day was once recognized
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By the VFW, GAR & DAR when I was a kid—
he Civil War dead not far away, but gone now
like the old Emporia County Courthouse
The streets of Emporia lined with—
Chase County quarry limestone, sidewalks,
bridges, church foundations, businesses
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The little Athens of the Midwest college town—
slowly but surely becoming a ghost town like
so many other small Kansas towns
Perhaps someday some writer like—
Masters will write about all of us in his own version
NEOSHO/COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY?
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