Today in the cemetery it is snowing flakes like clumpy, wet, chewed marshmallows. They feel heavy as they land in thuds on my shoulders. I can literally feel them individually fall on my posture. The ground is unseasonably warm today, and this is proven by the splatting and the instant liquid transformation the snow makes when in contacts the earth’s surface
Being in the Homewood Cemetery, looking across the stone “markings of placement”, it is hard not to think of the grave. And as the flakes dissolve into the ground I cannot help but think of the earth as the ultimate grave.
As I morbidly pounder the grave of the earth, and walk down the macadam streams of the cemetery I come pass a tree branch that has fallen. The branch lies in between two headstones, lying vertical. I imagine the branch is in consistency with the bodies underneath the slushy dirt. The tree has small limbs at its sides like legs and arms, and even smaller twigs like fingers and toes grabbed by rigor mortis. The skinned color of the deceased branch has changed from the original flush of its tree community, and is now pale, dipped in the blandness of separation. I am stunned by the so many “human like” expressions of this tree’s burial.
As I said, the branch lies between two headstones. The stone on the left is marked with the name, Layng. I think for a second that it reads Laying (which reminds me of lying) and I look again to make sure. It is Layng, but what a beautiful closeness on three levels.
They are all lying here: the body, the branch, the plant, the stone, the animal, the living, and the dead. I am here too, in my grave.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time in the cemetery.
I don't think I realized you were writing from Homewood.
ReplyDeleteI believe there's some markers there from late 19th century-ish: They're made to look like tree trunks, and it's an interesting commentary on what those particular folks felt about death. I think it encompasses some of the feeling that you had seeing the branch, the lawn, and the graves lying next to and against one another.
@Thom: Markers made to look like trees? I've never heard of such a thing - so naturally I had to Google it (the images that turned up were so amazing). I learned that:
ReplyDelete"According to Douglas Keister’s Stories in Stone, treestones were derived from the Victorian rusticity movement, and at one time could be ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalog."
You'll have to let us know if you find any there Cory.