Halloween approaches and All Hallows, so what we have here, so far, is a somewhat light-hearted approach to blood and death. 👻. Or not. 💀 ! Nota bene. In the Berea Cemetery a person might encounter towering oaks at the end of the first circle. I used to spend a lot of time in the Berea Cemetery in my somewhat athletic youth, running, of course. What I loved most about running was finishing. The closest I ever got to breaking 20 minutes on a 3.1 mile course was 20.4 minutes. But then my time started falling and my body started deteriorating, more and more, until here I am, stuck in a hospital bed and a lift chair, surrounded by what’s left of my books, whose pages I can no longer turn easily. However, thanks to modern technology I have an iPad and a kindle and I can still see, mostly, though the pressure in my eyes has gotten to be such that I need daily drops to fend off glaucoma. Alas.
Now, for those of you who think running is not profitable, I once found ten dollars stuck in cemetery mud as though it had been there for a bit. Thanks to Annie Dillard and Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek I would always stop even to pick up a penny, to say nothing of ten dollars or any amount in between!
I have good memories of the cemetery and not just from running there. In more liberal times my wife and I would walk our dogs over there; now there are signs of prohibition. “No dogs allowed.” My favorite companion back then was Lancelot, our old English sheepdog. His hair covered his face and eyes, so that I could sneak away from him, run and hide behind grave stones and large memorials. When he discovered that I had disappeared, he would race off after me and never failed in finding me. You could say he had a nose that knew, and it never failed him in hunting me. We would play that game on the college campus too. Once on the college campus when he took off after me he ran smack into a large tree that knocked him back on his butt. He was not hurt and he quickly found me, as he always did. How many dogs have we buried in the last fifty years? All beloved, all missed, terribly missed. Life is very good, and I think all is gift, starting with time and place.
Time, memory, mortality. What an interesting reality we inhabit. For excellent poetry on our situation in the so-called modern world, I recommend T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The poem is difficult but well worth the effort. Thomas Howard’s Dove Descending is a good commentary to read along with poem, which I think is the contemporary equivalent to Dante’s Comedy. Both works have the same concerns and may end at the same place, worth your consideration.
I Am
Walking about in the graveyard
Under the towering oak
Until the stone that bears my name
Says “stop!” for death’s no joke!
Such sardonic laughter
Such sardonic glee
Issues from the stone cold ground
And all the graves around me.
I turn to flee this darksome place,
But ghosts and ghouls surround me;
The chill of death is in the air;
Mortality confounds me.
Alas, amen, good night, adieu:
To all I bid my fond farewell
And trust that God in his good grace
Will keep me from the fire of Hell.
Blood
She injects the anesthetic
Into the unsuspecting arm
Unseen, unheard, most often,
She escapes, when full, no harm.
Unless of course you glimpse her
And, sudden smash, she’s bought the farm.
All that’s left’s the swelling red spot
And, an itch that’s three alarm!
