The Lost Reflected in a Churchyard

In Those Years

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through rages of fog
where we stood, saying I

Adrienne Rich

This is my local Anglo-Saxon church. I've taken photos of it before. I try to to take at least one every season...

A gloomy, blustery day this was. I think I must have been a little gloomy myself. This day when Dixie and I took a reverent shortcut through the churchyard, I was reminded of loves and lives long gone.

I spend quite a lot of time wondering how we manage to 'lose' people - part of the aging process, I am sure someone will say.

Obviously some die and we are left with the husks of their life... holding on.

Some are lost through choice: our choice, their choice, petty dramas that seemed so important at the time.

And yet others just seem to slip out the back door unseen. One day you turn to them only to find them gone...

I like to think that by merely remembering them, they are no longer lost...

Somedays I think that is the purpose of an Anglo-Saxon churchyard...