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Dandelion, flowering weed, little sun

Spring continues to unfold.  Today it is warm but not hot, with a gentle breeze blowing.  Birds are flitting about with nervous intensity, gathering nest-building materials or searching for food to feed the year's first hatchlings; the bushes and trees are vibrantly green with new leaves; violets and dandelions, daffodils and tulips, add bright dashes of color to gardens and lawns.  Anyone who possibly can be is out-of-doors.  Everywhere there is shouting and laughter, bustle and music, excitement and expectation.  I can't resist it either:  my apartment feels stuffy and drab.  I need, I must, get outside into the spring air.

I decide to take a walk to the cemetery.

I am drawn to the cemetery not by any morbid love for the dead, but simply because it's the only public land around here that's within walking distance:  everything else is privately owned.  There is a park in town, with benches and a fountain at the center of it, but on a day like today I know it will be overrun with people.  And I am one of those who prefer to be alone.

It's late afternoon by the time I set out.  The kids are already home from school, and I see them everywhere:  in the yards outside their houses, throwing balls about; huddled together in the street planning out some game; running up and down sidewalks, shrieking with high-pitched laughter.  I avoid them as best I can.  In front of one of the houses I pass I spot a teenaged girl dressed in shorts and a halter top; she's stretched out on a blanket to catch what's left of the sun.  As I pass by she lifts her head to gaze at me gazing at her.  I can't see her eyes – they're hidden behind a pair of large, round sunglasses – but she graces me with a Mona Lisa smile.  Farther along I see a chubby, grey-haired man dressed in a T-shirt and jeans; he's getting into a pickup truck.  "Beautiful day, isn't it?" he says, giving me a grin that stretches from ear to ear.  "Just beautiful – really beautiful!"  Then he clambers into his truck, starts it with a roar, and barrels away.

The cemetery is calmer.  In the distance I see two men, the groundskeepers, on their riding lawn mowers, and the occasional car passes slowly by on one of the winding roads; otherwise I'm alone.  I feel the moss and grass springy under my feet, and notice that flowers have started blooming on some of the graves.  As I make my way over to the ravine at the lip of the woods on the cemetery's far side, I glance down at the occasional headstone, noting here the extreme shortness of one life, here the extreme length of another.  Two stones in particular catch my eye.  They are placed side by side, close together; both are small and narrow, blackened with age, and rounded on top where embossed letters of printing are.  There are no dates of birth and death, no ornamental carvings, no epitaphs.  "MOTHER," says the first stone simply, in bold capital letters.  "RALPH," says the stone beside it.  I cannot help but wonder at this.  And then I cannot help but laugh.

When I reach the edge of the ravine I stop for a few minutes to catch my breath and quiet my mind.  Everywhere I look the world seems vividly alive.  From the shadows of the ravine small insects fly out, wavering through the sunlit air.  A chipmunk climbs the trunk of a nearby tree and races out to the end of one of the branches, scolding noisily all the while.  Looking up through the treetops, I notice how the intersecting branches make a puzzle of the sky.  The ground beneath my feet, with its various grasses and weeds, its ivies and mosses, reveals a dozen different shades of green.  Underneath that, the earth shows a reddish patch here, a brownish or black patch there.  There are twigs and dried leaves, tiny pebbles, bits of old bark and dead seeds . . .  Then suddenly it's the gravestones I'm noticing most.  Everywhere before me they stand, dozens and dozens of them, all shapes and sizes.  Some are low and squat, some jut high up into the air.  Once they were boulders perhaps, or part of a rock quarry, buried underground; now they are carved into shapes square or oblong, flat or curved, short and stumpy or tall and thin; and they have taken on an almost human quality to me.  They rear up stiffly, backs rigidly straight; they confront me severely, with a silence that seems to buffet my ears.  It's as they're giving me a reprimand; it's as if I had, by allowing myself to become distracted from their somber message of death, given them affront.

I walk along the edge of the ravine awhile; then, coming upon the opening of a path that leads into the woods, plunge down it.  I find that a tree has fallen across the path since I've last been here, and someone has used a chainsaw to cut a great hunk out of the middle of it so that people can pass unhindered.  This strikes me as ironic, the hacking away at nature so that people can enjoy nature.  Farther along I notice soda cans and cigarette butts and beer bottles scattered about, also plastic wreathes and pots galore.  It's been quite awhile now since I picked up any trash from these woods; apparently it doesn't take long for it to start collecting again.  I think back to my former self, visualizing the young man with the plastic bag in his hand, picking up garbage.  For a moment that man lives again, walking the path just ahead of me.  He stops – bends over to pick something up and drop it in his bag – then stands upright again . . .  I walk right through him.  It feels as if I've just walked through a ghost.

I begin to notice that the woods are full of another kind of debris too.  Everywhere I look there are fallen trees, some still showing white where the trunk has twisted and broken away, others moss covered and rotting.  Some have been caught in the midst of falling and now lean, half-uprooted but still alive, against their neighbors.  Dead branches litter the ground, and there are dead leaves everywhere underfoot.  Yet everywhere too there are signs of new life:  the myrtle growing on the sloping side of the ravine is dotted with starry, purple blooms; the saplings have sent out long, fresh shoots; and down by the creek where the ground is still wet, the skunk cabbages are unfurling their huge green leaves.  Every gradation in the cycle of life – birth, death, decay, and rebirth – is present here somewhere.  And every stage of the cycle is equally important, because every stage is equally necessary.  They all work together to create an interlocking whole.  Where else, I think, need a person look to experience the "transcendent" wonder of the oneness of all things, except to nature?

When I emerge from the woods some time later, coming up the path back into the cemetery again, the sun is a bright orange ball hanging just above the horizon.  The temperature's beginning to drop a bit now; soon it will be dark.  I decide it's time to make my way back home.  Winding round the gravestones, the trees and the many rhododendron bushes, I head back towards the road that will lead me into town.  But I must be following a slightly different route from any I've ever taken before, because I suddenly come upon something I've never before noticed.  It's nothing special, really; it's only that, having gone round a few large bushes, I find on the other side of them the stump of what must have once been a giant of a tree.  The stump itself is a good five feet across at least.  The tree had apparently been cut down some years ago – the round, smooth surface of the stump has blackened, and there's moss growing on it; but the wood hasn't yet begun to rot.  I stand up on the stump and stretch out my arms, still wondering at its breadth, trying to imagine how high the tree's branches must have once reached.  Experimentally I close my eyes and try to make myself go still inside.  I want to see if I can somehow "feel" the presence of the tree that had once been there.  But I cannot.  I open my eyes again, looking about me to see if my awareness of the tree's absence has made any difference to the appearance of the world I see.  But no – it has not.

Yet I do feel something . . .  What is it?  I shut my eyes again and concentrate, reaching down inside myself to discover what the feeling is.  I have sense of hollowness inside me, a feeling of . . . is it regret?  No, not that, not quite.  It's more like a sense of sadness, of sorrow – and yet still there is that feeling of hollowness too.  And then I have it.  What I'm experiencing is a sense of loss – that hollowed out sense of loss we all experience whenever something or someone important to us has disappeared, left us, died.

I open my eyes.  As I do so a breeze starts up, rustling the trees about me.  What I hear next is a sort of clicking sound, as if the branches and twigs of the trees are being knocked together by a sudden gust of wind.  It's like the sound of a light rapping, a tapping, of wooden knuckles on a wooden door.  And then I hear the whispering of the trees . . .

I remember an out-of-body experience I had once.  As it began I found myself first floating in the darkness somewhere above the area of my bed, cognizant of having become a disembodied presence that was fully separate from yet still conscious of the body that was lying on the bed below, lungs filling and emptying themselves of air, heart beating away.  I could see nothing but blackness all around me, yet I sensed, floating nearby, several other disembodied presences.  These presences seemed to be leading me through the darkness until I became aware, after a time, of a great number of presences gathered somewhere in space far down below.  They were calling to me.  I couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but I sensed that they were sending me a greeting:  they were telling me hello.  A little while later, I felt myself moving away from them, and sensed that they were calling to me once again.  This time they were bidding me farewell.  And then, all at once, I "woke up."

It's just the same now with the whispering of the trees.  I have no doubt about it:  the trees are literally speaking to me.  It's just as it was when the voices called to me out of the darkness:  I hear no words, but I'm as certain of what's happening now as I was then.  I'm being sent a greeting.  The greeting is sent in a language not my own, yet I understand it; I know:  the trees are telling me hello!

Then the wind calms, and I see a car making its way up along the narrow, winding road.  I jump down off the tree trunk and continue to make my way towards home.

The sun has by now dipped below the horizon.  The streets and yards, so busy a little while ago, are nearly empty; everybody's gone indoors to eat their dinners and watch TV.  A dim, grey light is falling, but it casts no pall over the town.  For this one evening, for this one brief space of time, that grey light shows me a world not gone drab and cold, but one in which everything I see – the street, the parked cars and trucks, the houses and yards, the little flower gardens, the bushes and trees – have all become equal.  Each object holds a place of equal importance to all the others.  They are all of a piece – and thus, for this one moment at least, are made whole.

Twilight bright:  blue forget-me-nots planted round a rock

Purple wounds at dusk:  a stunted lilac tree tries to blossom

Alone:  following this empty street that leads me home