Walking through Mount Hope, I notice things:

A stone with four names - all children - none of whom lived more than a year.
Graves so old the ground has sunk a body's curve down and filled up with water or fallen leaves.
Portraits etched in some newfangled, gaudy way in stone.

The rows are named after trees like street signs.

I decide that when I'm dead, I want to live on Willow Street, Slot? Spot? Space? Number 9.
It's always been my number.
I like the way it looks foetal.
I like that it is the last single digit number before things get complicated by the addition of ones and twos and so on.

It is a number that reaches for the completion of ten.
It feels unfinished, anticipatory.
It feels like something starting over.

Then there is the matter of willows.
I spent my childhood up one.
It taught me once about bending without breaking.
It was cut down and I learned how we all break in the end.

So, I will occupy 9 Willow St. at the end of my days.
It will be a grassy cliff into the next grand adventure -
as maggot food or shade tree or restless shade or ash.

I take comfort in that.

RSG
04.09.06

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