We visited the gravesite of Emily ****inson yesterday.Someone had left the poet a blue pen and a yellow flower.I ran my hand over the mouldering words"called back"...and scraped a little at the grey-green moss that may have reached her lips but never stifled her voice.

"A word is dead as it is said some say, I say it begins to live that day..."



We also located the grave of a poet/librarian friend of mine named Whitney Tarr.He lies not far from Em herself. I had met him whilst working in the local pharmacy.He came in one windy winter day, after recovering a manuscript that had been breeze liberated and blown all down Main street.He shuffled the papers about in a file folder, red-cheeked and out of breath.He tipped his fedora and requested a box of paper clips.As I listened to his story and commiserated we made fast friends.I never knew he had passed but should have had a clue when the Christmas cards stopped coming.I knocked into his tombstone by accident on an evening stroll through beautiful West cemetery a few years after the fact. I remembered how each time we met on a street corner, after the never-not-worn fedora was appropriately tipped, I got to hear whatever rhyme he was cajoling into existance at the time..."Scarlet,you starlet harlot.." the last ione I heard began.I've often wondered how it ended and what one may have ended when he did, never to be uttered on street corner or anywhere else.



We also enjoyed the fragrant bouquet that is West cemetery, olfactory witness to the Amherstian lifestyle...with mingling scents of beer,Chinese food, the 24 hr laundromat and the watery akali of prevalent hydrangea bushes.My adult nose can discern each succesive yumminess, barley, teriyaki sauce,clean cotton and eternal smelling blossoms...my much younger senses always told me 'carnival'...my ideals of Heaven and it's jumping off places were always tainted with sensousity and lyric.Still are.

We also vistied Wildwood cemetery.A raging beauty of a place, designed after Kensall Green in Britain, this final resting place has become more and more enchanted over the years.Created by Emily ****inson's brother Austin, his brood lies there, and so do a lot of my ancestors.I am related to the Stone's and the (De)Southworth's.A large brass horse now runs through the woods back there, and diversity rules amongst the Christian, Jewish and Bhuddic tomb decor.We visit another poet while we are here,the lesser known Harrison "Ozzy" Klate, who died of a heroin overdose at age 17.He left behind him over 1,000 pages of poetry and prose, perhaps some music if memory serves me.His lungs filled with fluid as he slept telling his drowsy brain he was drowning, his body shut down oddly enough in self-defense.he never woke.Here he lies.His stone is small, underwhelming in fact, a brass-green bhudda for company, friends have left Ozzy a harmonica, an altoid tin, slips of rain-altered notes on crinkley paper, email addresses aimed at visitors finding eachother but so smeared it's not possible. Cd's of music in plastic baggies are left here by his parents with a note asking visitor's to take and cherish the msuic explaining that another will be left as soon a this one is discovered missing.A novel idea.



We take our time here...walk ,hold hands, steal kisses, take pictures.Lots of pictures.I show Bree the places I used to sleep, when finding a place to sleep were sometimes necessary, my ancestors slept below, I napped above.The groundskeeper, who never biothers anyone but us, shows up, asks if he can help us find something or tells us we can't park where we've parked,something lame so he can bother the picture takers enjoying the bright day in peace and harmony.We brush him off, intrusion averted, he can sell his shortnesses elsewhere.

We take pictures.I study myself in Bree's dark glasses.I bask in the sunlit glow of her bright clothes.My senses linger here and there, I hide in the midnight fold of her eyes. I study her,that I love most and cherish the passing seconds somewhere looking out from just below her surfaces.There is nothing like a day, when described, that every paragraph begins with.."We...".

A-mazing! I love walking around and taking pictures in cemeteries. Especially historical ones, but I guess every cemetery is historical in its own little way. I just love to read every word you write. Gorgeous pictures<3

You know I lost it, I wrote it all once and the puter ate it, and I was so sad, I finally wrote it over..thank you for saying that, it made the angst worthwhile!!\o/ Breelicious took the piccies.

Breelicious is awesome!

Wow.

Your words.. her pictures. Could there BE a better combination?
[Only if you throw some dead poets and pretty cemetries into the mix]

Megrit, I agree and Thank you so much!!<333

Ches, you are the sweetest of hearts.If ya didn't know, there ya go, I told ya so. <333333

pen dragon I know nothing about poetry but I think I just learned a little today so thank you for sharring your gift

I was basically sharing the gifts of others right then, but ,yeah, thanks.