2nd place in the 2020 Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature Robert Burns Poetry Competition - unpublished poets section

IN THE BONEYARD WHERE THE QUIETEST THING IS HUMAN

Cicada luxuriate,
singing songs in the sun as Korimako be a-belling
where no souls stir within their concrete tenements
& Piwakawaka flit about Bluebottles dancing
and Titipounaumu blend in the background
and all they all are doing is
whatever it is that they do

  ;Where
Kereru whomp whomp from bough to bough, feasting in abundance;
  all day vegetation prey
Spiders making busy, setting their traps;
  Trees of differing colours
some never nude, some already bare, some getting ready for the bareness,
Orange leaves blanketing the Dead warming the way for Winter.

I watched a bee dying-crawling over a well weathered headstone
eroded by time and the elements which says nothing; & SO:
"Here Lies Mrs. Bumble, Now."

I am Maudlin, Melancholic. Alone, Free to roam here in my backyard
beneath the Great Eucalypt where not a leaf moves in no breeze.
  I break the noise by crushing a can, opening another.
It is unlikely that my drinking buddy Mary Robertson would approve;
Mary's been dead since nineteen twenty-one,
aged sixty-five and she has no salt in the game
in the affairs of a Twenty-First Century Crypt-Dweller like me.

(shortly after this was written, Mary ghosted home on my shoulder and threw my beer across the room. She was the only lady to enter my home during level 4, bless.)