Visiting Graveyards

“Everyone in this house
has gray hair, walks with a cane,
visits the graveyard." -Basho

I pass it almost everyday as I walk in the evening. My eyes drink in the exuberant green, the first strands of color staining the sky...my spirit drinks this beauty in like it is parched.  It seems my soul has been asleep.  Been elsewhere for some time.  It feels as though the essence of me has not really been where my body has been...

Have my eyes been shut?  Why?  I shake my head and see.  And curiously, it dawns on me, I have looked and looked for so long but I have not really seen.  If we were talking about a color, I would pause maybe, try to explain that the green was so rich and so vivid, I felt like I should touch it, run my fingers through the feathery grass as I would have done if I'd been a child.  That the pink in the sky was soft and delicate, so delicate I thought the strength of it should break my heart.  Do you understand what I mean?  My eyes are parched and they are the window to my parched soul.  This all brings to mind the thought that I would move through these years like a ghost, if I could choose.  But I see you don't know what I mean...  I am all spirit.  I am all soul.  I am all color and yearning.  I am distant from myself, homesick for my own heart.

It would seem the remedy for this is a gentle falling backward, into forgotten things.  Forgotten things like the colors of the earth and sky, the cool fresh air, my thirsty eyes.  A graceful diminishing.  Late summer sweetness.  Autumn leaves.  The things I need.  The things I need...


I pass the graveyard almost everyday.

A quiet meeting place of memories and souls and once beautiful people who never imagined growing old.  Secrets buried with broken hearts, the placing of dirt over hopes and dreams. A turning to.  A turning away  The knowledge that nothing can ever stay.

Ah, here you are, your face, my heart.

I am young.  I've been younger.  I visit all sorts of graveyards after dark.