Cemetery Awakening - Place Prompt #5

Saturday, March 17, 2012 - 12:36 PM - 67 degrees - sunny, warm, and breezy

Today I decide to be stationary. Each time I’ve come to the cemetery, I have moved, walked around or mulled about, sometimes for hours. Today, it is warm, the sun shining from a crispy blue sky, and it’s a lot like spring, almost summer even. I want to sit in the sun, feel the warmth of it, laze about, take in just one particular view of the cemetery as its life is more alive than in winter.

There are birds sounding everywhere. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced here before, that flat, motionless, lifeless terrain I described in my first visit. I’ve come to an aviary, but I cannot see the birds. They want me to listen, to enjoy their music. I wish now that I had been schooled in picking out the calls of various birds so as to know which are with me today. I know some, but they are in South Carolina. I can tell you what a mockingbird sounds like as it dips and dives onto Ticky Tac to protect its territory; I can describe the buzz of hummingbird wings, so close in memory that I can almost hear it right beside me.

I look down, to the left, from the weathered concrete bench on which I sit, overlooking the steep drop and rise of the cemetery before me.

The grass is short and green, except for patches where it has grown taller, somewhat ragged, but still bright. A fat bee buzzes in one of these right beside my leg. I don’t draw back like many people might. Years of working at the barn have made me accustomed to certain insects, like these bees, and other“creepy crawlies”-- giant writing spiders, snakes and skinks. I feel anaffinity towards this bee, wish there were flowers near for him.

I turn to survey the land beside and behind me. Most of the trees are still skeletal, save for the evergreens. But I notice a tree in bright pink bloom hanging over the edge of the drive to my left.

To my right, in the distance, there is a bush that is blossoming white flowers that remind me of daisies upon closer inspection, though I know they're not.

I notice the weeping willow which I had seen on my first visit, remember how its strands were brown. They are green now.

I would like to see all of the trees full and bushy. They don’t look like they’ll ever grow green again, even in this awakening of life.

There are birds that have flown to the grasses before me, allowing them to see me now. They hop around, fly into one another, chirp. I think they are robins, but the sun is in front of me and they are more like shadows from this angle. One lone bird has flown to a patch of shadow beneath the bare, angular limbs of a tree, sits alone, seems to do what I am doing—contemplating the land. This one is definitely a robin. I know from the way it moves in the grass before I see its red breast. They were all around in my suburban yard while I was growing up. My attention is drawn to the shadow in which it sits, a dark reflection of the skeleton growing above it. I realize I love the shadows of these trees as much as the trees themselves.

As much as I like this cemetery, the way it is more alive, and how I can see differences from all of the past times I have visited, part of me misses the cold, seemingly lifeless place with which I first became familiar, the way I had to patiently wait for it to divulge its layers. Change is difficult, they say, and even such a change, which many would assume to be a good one, is somewhat sad to me, makes me nostalgic. Still, I do like seeing the evolution of this cemetery. It's amazing that this is the same place in the photos I took before.

Today, human life in the cemetery is much more apparent as well. There is a group of people walking in exercise gear and sunglasses. Several cars have passed near me in the cemetery proper, not just on South Dallas Avenue to my right. And yet more people walk by. It’s strange to see a place of death come to life, sustain it. It’s also strange for this cemetery to be so open to public use. No one is afraid of the dead here.

The sun starts to burn my arms. I can feel the heat from my skin as I’ve sat on this bench for a while now. The breeze sends ripples through the taller patches of grasses and seems to blow on me to cool the burn, much like my mother would do when she poured hydrogen peroxide on my cuts. I wonder what it is about the sun that makes people feel lazy, the breeze that makes people calm, want to let their hair down to feel it runs its fingers through their hair. I wonder now about this place, how much it reminds me of South Carolina, how it’s that same sun and a similar breeze, the same sky which nurtures me there, 600 miles away. I’d love to be at the barn today. I can almost feel the muscular sway of my horse beneath me as we laze through the woods. But I've got a thesis due on Tuesday!