Appetite

Lunch

31 Lunch Lunching with Stevens Henry 1838-1864 on one side, and the Masonic sign of Lawrence aged 25—1889 beaming at me on the other conjures my appetite and peace of mind as if there was a secret passage between soul and stomach, one filling the other with shadowy whispers of those who lay at rest. I put my drink on the edge of a grave. The sun has stretched its warmth February noon and almost cloys the crisp air. A slow bee clumsily buzzes winter away and a few birds have made an apparition chirping separately as trammeling a song out of the blue. They partially fill the score of their tune, each note discrete in the mathematical sense detached, lifted of themselves— my solitary mind completes their song stream. Stevens, Lawrence, Hartley-Fathers, Henrietta Hill I salute you, eating my lunch in this small town cemetery with no one here but the wind, the tousling wind that squeals branches and gives a bald hump to the hill— tombstones flagging at the top round and sallow like an old man’s teeth, dead leaves of chewed tobacco. ...