Cordelia Crow
I walked through a cemetery on a frigid morning. When I hit grass, frost crunched underfoot. I passed deer and squirrels. I passed a man drinking malt liquor and a man walking his tiny dog. I passed inmates gearing up to manicure the grounds.
My mind drifted to my teaching days, when I used cemeteries as a curriculum for journalism, creative writing and photography. Those days are buried like the dead people buried in this frosty cemetery.
I like to think I’m buried in the ground and not sealed up in a mausoleum. In the ground means I’d make it back to the ocean all that much faster. Centuries instead of millenniums.
Where will I rain again? Will I rain?
In my cemetery wanderings, I always check for the good old names and a signature item left behind to commemorate a quirky deceased human being. I discovered both: Cordelia Crow and a bird feeder rigged up over a headstone, the latter something I’d never seen in all my cemetery investigations. The feeder was sturdy, shiny, fully stocked. I read the headstone. The husband had died last year. His wife’s birth date was inscribed in the marble, but she wasn’t dead yet. She was vising his grave and restocking the feeder. He must have been a bird man. Maybe they were a bird watching and bird feeding couple.
I could have done a lot with that bird feeder with my creative writing students. What a wonderful prompt right in front of their youthful eyes to have them explore aging and love and death and remembrance and birds. They wouldn’t have to use the actual names on the headstone in their writing. The students could roam and ramble the cemetery and find their own favorite names. I just know someone would have picked Dewey.