A Life Lived When Tallow Candles Burned on the Table

POETRY

A Life Lived When Tallow Candles Burned on the Table

And hearth was heart of the home

Graveyard in Bideford-Appledore, England, photo by author

What is it about graveyards that is always so fascinating? Especially, for me anyway, the old, very old, standing, leaning, headstones in a graveyard overgrown with coarse grasses and wildflowers.

Graveyard in Bodmin-Churchtown, England, photo by author

The stories they tell, with a little muse and imagination, more spell-binding than a book when you’re curled up in a window with a hand-stitched quilt and a splash of sunshine falling across your lap and tiny stitches.

An unknown legacy, a life lived when tallow candles burned on the table, and hearth was heart of the home. When ink-stained fingers wrote the stories, and church bells signaled the time.

Names and numbers, worn away by time and weather, so alive when the beloved placed the marker commemorating their lost love who once played in the light of day and hung on tightly at night.

Lichen growing like flowers on the surface of a loved one’s final story.

Graveyard in Bodmin-Churchtown, England, photo by author

What is dead becomes alive and your heart is made warm by the imagined memories of a life you never knew.

That’s why we walk and take pictures In a graveyard

Searching for someone’s truth.

Graveyard in Bideford-Appledore, England, photo by author