Death

Shadows Fall

Places of loss and time long gone

I’m drawn to forgotten places like abandoned farmhouses, derelict graveyards, and neglected cemeteries. The way old forgotten spaces can make you feel is instinctual, I think. It’s a sense of reverie and of loss.

Graveyards and cemeteries, especially, evoke a feeling of something like a memory of a child bereft in tragedy. There’s a deep melancholy in visiting forgotten graves… a fascination in these spaces. It’s as if we are voyeurs, traipsing into someone else’s memories.

I spent a morning, back in 2017, photographing in a forgotten church graveyard. There were old faded flowers and bric-a-brac on many of the graves. But, it was obvious it had been a long time since anyone had visited those graves. Gray, my then-young son, was with me while I was photographing this old churchyard cemetery.

Gray ruminated on how those old touches made the graves seem sad … that someone once cared but didn’t seem to anymore. In the image below, the child whose shadow falls across the grave in the image is my son’s. His ruminations that day, in combination with the image below, inspired the poem.

Shadows Fall

Places of loss and time long gone Treading the paths of mourning Of dreaming ended in nevermore All hope at an end and buried deep Left behind by those who lived on Now speaking to seekers of melancholy Strangers long laid to eternal rest Now left to be revered by strangers Shadows fall on forgotten memories

© 07 July 2018 by D. Denise Dianaty. Previously published on WritersCafe.org

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