Graveyards

Nine days from now, where will you be? Perhaps you’ll be indoors, trying to get on with real life whilst being constantly interrupted by children. Perhaps you’ll go out for the night, fancy dressed to the hilt for the scariest night of the year. Perhaps you’ll put a sign on the door, one side reading ‘Newborn child: No noise after six’, the other reading ‘Shift Workers: Please do not disturb’. No? Well maybe I’m just a misery guts then. I think it has something to do with the fact that, cute as young children are, I find absolutely nothing endearing about what can only be described as gangs of teenagers hammering door to door demanding sugary treats and money from old people. 

This is the reality of what happens here on All Hallows Eve and I’ve yet to meet a trick or treat yobo that can explain to me when All Saints Day is. If they can’t open a diary, check a bit of backstory or even make their own outfit (you know the ones, dressed in either a bleeding Scream mask or as a KKK ghost), then why should I. There will be no sweets on offer here.  Whilst I did used to like the idea, I have better things to do… plus I don’t really believe in ghosts.

In celebration of all the hard work put in for the Haunted Blackpool illuminations project, we’re devoting two weeks of blogging to ghosts and other such things as a lead up to the event (see post below). Understandably, this caused a bit of an issue for me- a non-believer so I’ve dredged up a poem from the notebook. I realised there have been a lot of memorable moments for me that were set in graveyards. From pilgrimages to moments of reflection, they form a landscape almost everyone can relate to. We all have access to a graveyard, we’ve all probably been in one and we’ll all end up passing through one at some point. I suppose this poem is about all of those things- the little moments, the fragments of memory and the reflecting upon it. Hope you enjoy.

Graveyards

Beside a granite slab I once remembered

Sat down and cried myself into a mess

Then left rejuvenated, full of memories

Uncovered from my mind’s seldom sought depths.

I lived another day seeking a writer

Whose time had passed so many years too soon

Beside me was the girl whose chief inspirer

Was buried by our feet that afternoon

And there were times as kids we used to laugh there

We fished and swung from ropes tied up on trees

We gathered there at night to put the frighteners

Up local kids as we told ghost stories

This solemn place we avoid all our lifetimes

The place we lay when no more days to give

Reveals the vast spectrum of man's emotion

Dares us to consider how we live.

Thanks for reading,
S.