Poetry

Change of Plans

A poem on ancestors — with reflections on writing

I abandoned my idea to write a book in cemeteries

but I feel the dead when it rains and they can’t hear it. I carry

the dead as I listen, remembering when telephones had cradles

connected to the wall and receivers that buzzed with life

if you left them off the hook.

I did have an idea to write such a book of poems, rooted in observations I planned to jot in a notebook during cemetery walks. But I realized I was connecting to the past meditatively from my writing desk and that I felt more like pondering things in my heart than in actual cemeteries (if I can be forgiven the comparison to the words describing Mary in Luke 2:19).

I had a deeply moving experience in a pioneer cemetery once, on a visit to Charlotte, North Carolina. In that cemetery, I saw fireflies for the first time in my life. We don’t have fireflies where I live in the Pacific Northwest. Suddenly, countless busy creatures were flying between the gravestones, shining their tiny lights to attract each other.

My former (long-distance) girlfriend was with me there in Charlotte, and as we looked at the old graves, she talked about how each of our lives is a comma in the larger story of humanity, and how she felt OK about this fact. I agreed. We both felt extra alive. For that evening, everything made perfect sense, even the reality TV show we half-watched when we got back to our hotel room.

We were existing in an in-between space, visiting a city where neither of us lived. Everything felt beautiful and urgent and elevated, illuminated by all those fireflies in a way that felt brighter and more powerful than a lightning strike.

When I got home, I wrote about the fireflies. I wrote about her. I even wrote about Mary. I didn’t write the book I’d imagined, but maybe I’ll write another book one of these days.