Between Grass And Sky: Where I Live And Work

Coda: Walking Burial Grounds

2 0 9 “Prairie Rest” reads the sign at the cemetery gates. My notion of rest differs from my dog’s, but we’re both anxious to pause after several hours of bouncing over narrow plains roads. These prairie rests are one reason I drive to most of the readings or workshops I present. Travel by car offers hours of uninterrupted thought, pleasure in silence and scenery on the way to agreeable labor. My perversity in avoiding airplanes may be one reason I’m almost unknown more than two states away from home. Publicity experts advise me to promote myself more. They don’t say I’d be publicizing my work, but my self, as if the body, not the words, was important. Wandering among the ranks of the dead reduces my worry over the value of such advertising to its proper measure. Below this knoll, a couple of cumbersome locomotives are swapping places on entwined tracks. On chalky cliffs rising south of the two-street town, thousands of immigrants cut their names, waiting for the oxen to rest on the overland journey. Thousands more, coming through in the century since those first travelers passed, carved their names as well, and are now scorned for defacing the history we recognize in the earlier names. Steadily, the wind etches its own history, perpetually erasing the human testimony. I park in the shade of a spruce tree planted by someone who decided to stay here, rather than pass by, and fill Frodo’s water dish from my bottle. He W A L K I N G B U R I A L G R O U N D S CODA Hasselstrom/157-220 6/13/02 10:55 AM Page 209 2 1 0 • b e t w e e n g r a s s a n d s k y scrambles over the backseat and tumbles out, and we drink together in the shade. Zigzagging, he maneuvers to pass every carefully tended tree, connecting the dots in yellow along his route. His behavior is never improper. He centers his attention on trees and larger bushes, sniffing at tombstones only if he finds evidence of mice. I walk fast, swinging my arms and legs, bending and stretching to work the stiffness out of my shoulders. Comfortable in cemeteries, I don’t whistle to frighten ghosts, even after dark. The worst dangers on the prairie are above-ground, and noise is no protection. On the contrary, in graveyards, I sense a friendly crowd making their presence known in quiet whispers that might be the sound of grass. Sprinklers count cadence for my exercise, whispering news bulletins about shrinking aquifers beneath my feet. Irrigated grass is clipped short and fabulously green, disavowing its location. Pioneer settlers of this gaunt prairie would stare in wonder if they rose up through the sham sod on this hot June day. A shoulder-high metal shaft, now empty, once provided a faucet for passersby . I read the Spanish surname on the green bronze plate aloud, thanking them for the thought. The modern watering system has no provision for thirsty strangers, human or canine. Stones above these dead affirm their plains setting. Among the familiar uprights of commercially polished marble stand homemade concrete slabs. “Let’s put pretty rocks in Grandma’s stone,” someone said, pressing into the damp mortar bits of quartz and granite, mica and agate, feldspar and chert. A sparkling geode stands on top, nearest heaven. For a little while, in earth’s time frame, these headstones will offer terse clues to the unwritten accounts dispersed under the sod. In a city cemetery I visit often, one concrete stone is plastered smooth and white, with a design outlined on it in whiter shells. No name, no date. Another stone bears a carving of a man on a motorcycle, leaning to speed around one final curve. Japanese stones stand only a modest foot or two high, with a single line of characters I cannot read. Rows of ribbony agates march down the vertical stalk of a concrete cross; those embedded on the horizontal arm spell “Mother.” Did she walk the prairie collecting them, peering among grasses and sagebrush, arranging her favorites on the winHasselstrom /157-220 6/13/02 10:55 AM Page 210 dowsill above the sink? I hope she’s pleased her family used them to decorate her modest marker...