Monday, January 31, 2011

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Marsh by Maryka Gillis

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Essex by Lucas Olson

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Cool Water by Lucas Olson

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Arch by Lucas Olson

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The Graveyard by Elizabeth MacDougal

The Graveyard

They are quiet now. Cold frost cannot nip colder toes. Dead heads of last season’s grass grows thick with the white precipitate. And heaped over still-standing stones in the wall, drifted tall against the slanted slates so old, the snow will inundate the solid turf in time. But now the winter scene that plays upon a stage which should be so serene, does not tell of future thaw–nor does it tell of death.

My life has always been an animated thing untinged by the solemn bodies below the overgrown curvature of earth which composes the grave yard’s bed. Observing now the locust trees grown tall and thorny in their age among the last age’s life, I can recall little foreboding in their imposing form; more memories of them are tense from the dread of discovery as I crouched behind their rough trunks in a neighborhood game of manhunt. The effect of the Dead beneath my feet was no fresher then than now, and the symbolic grievance of the graves seemed a thing unnatural in emotion, yet natural as a response. The yard to me is a human construction that I know to be a cry–yet cannot hear. I have noted, sure, the growth of the stones as the dated centuries changed, as though the deceased feared each other’s fate, and tried to reach high from where they lay. I knew they were no more. As I looked out the window each morning, though, or left the house, catching sight unconsciously of the long cemetery, the tombs became a familiar presence, rather than the tags of absence.

Frost has now obscured the scene, and where I have just pressed my warm palm, its print still dripping, a different churchyard is visible. Hundreds of graves, this time blank, attest to unknown death. In this absent note of absence, I am reminded for whom the bell tolls.