In this cemetery, the English ivy does all the work of grief, circling, knotting, twisting, persistent as a scavenger. It listens, a crowd of one, hanging on every engraved word. As vines reach the sky, their five-lobed leaves give way to a simpler shape, a sort of teardrop, & the umbels drip nectar. The fact that the berries are poisonous to humans is incidental, I’m sure, & the plant can’t help how invasive it’s become overseas, pulling down natives with no natural defenses against such clinging. Bindwood, they call it here. Lovestone. Grief’s greenest eraser, wearing holes in every last will & testament & scrawling in the breach its own cursive signature.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Passage to Exile
- Sacred Teachings of the Ancient Victorians
- Hedera helix
- Boneyard Dogs
- Import/Export
- Mutiny
- In Loving Memory
- One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
- Horror Fictions
- Extremophile
- Curating the Dead
- Artifactual
- Among the Brambles
- Heat Indices
- Grief Bacon
- If there were such things as ghosts
- The life of the body
- The Angel of Confession
- Ghost-writing
- Death Angels
Love this, Dave, gives me a bit more appreciation for this beautiful yet invasive vine that I’m forever pulling away from our trees.
Can’t wait to see what you do with kudzu.
Informative and also beautiful. I just love the way you write. You have a visionary’s gift. I always leave Via Negativa better informed on all levels… not least the poetic… than when I came.
hanging on every word, lovely.=)