Rust

[fdelano]

Rust

 

Worn overalls sag into porch rocker

after eight hours in cotton mill

Caring wife reads aloud the daily news

relieving her twelve hour day of house.

 

Fatal stroke hits at midnight

arising wife and progeny in terror

Kin and neighbors soon gather

to stumble in grieving support.

 

Men bring chairs, tobacco, taciturnity

to sit all night around the walls

holding a seemingly fixed companion

in a box over a fifty-pound block of ice.

 

Destitution does not deter the widow

from placing the finest granite marker

over one side of the double plot

the slowest piece of always decaying matter.

 

 

Again, apologies for my absence. This is another piece, memory, from my memoir of "Growing up in Georgia." I am trying to write through the eyes of the child that I was at the time. I too am rusting, like all of life. Forgive me if I don't respond in a mannerly time.

[Benjamin]

Most thoughts are memories and the mind filters and prioritises them during our active lifespan. Early experience of bereavement however, is unforgettable; and through the austerity I noted a significant human empathy: a common decency of "Kin and neighbours", a proudness and dignity of "the finest granite marker". Comfort perhaps among other reflections that can surface in later life and are not always pleasant.

I found your mention of side by side plots interesting. In our traditional cemeteries it is usual to find interred couples placed in a single plot, one on top of the other. My own parents were buried this way although the trend nowadays is for cremation. Can't avoid the economics of a hi-tec "business" I suppose...even after death.

Keep the "rust" at bay with the WD40 of writing..... Cheers! And best wishes, Geoff.

[dr_con]

A masterfully retold memory. Liked the title and the tale.

 

Well done Paco!

 

Juris