It's a quiet place, this gated community so well integrated and clean the scent of magnolias fills the air with spring promise and squirrels leap bravely from tree to tree It's a growing community with well-mannered inhabitants visiting hours always end early but no one ever complains visitors don't often stay long anyway the lengthy silences are hard to sustain It's a beautiful, peaceful place I'll probably settle down there one day and join the rest of the well-behaved neighbors far removed from the city and all of its strains but please don't mention this to my mother she'll want me moving in right next to her It's a place that will wait patiently for me to join its extended society but I fear the transition to this unfamiliar world apart from the discords I've come to endure the familiar always seems to feel so right even when it isn't always so polite It's a place I think I'll stop by today and visit with mom at the usual place I'll bring a bouquet of her favorite fresh flowers in a new crystal vase etched with delicate forms somehow I hope she knows that I care even though she might not know that I'm there Lately I've thought, is it so unlikely that our loved ones continue to live and thrive in an underground village after they've died in the afternoon breeze I can hear the faint whispers of those below us awaiting our arrival in an underground world free of burden and hurt Into this graveyard thousands have walked and left offerings at the tombs of their dead they tread the ground, never imagining that a parallel universe exists beneath a place that is neither heaven nor hell and where death no longer is cause for fear To each his own fantasy; this one is mine families and lovers are joined one more time in the cool, fragrant earth they play hide and seek with children lost early, now healthy and complete I find such a concept easier to accept than to think of my loved ones as bones and nothingness