From the tower at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in...

From the tower at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, one stands above the gravestones and one stands above the trees.
The Boston skyline spreads itself along the horizon to the south; the Harvard
Stadium across the river looks ancient, Roman; there are mostly trees to
the north with steeples spearing here and there. On Saturday afternoon around
two, the sun already on its downward slink here at the end of the year, the oak
leaves took the light like new leather: they shone. Nine people crowded at the
tower top. Some gestured at bright trees. Others named buildings. A woman
pointed out where she lived, ‘over there, by Fresh Pond, see those three
towers?’ Above the earth, the graves, it seems, get forgotten. Here we are in
the sky! A whole city unfolds below us! All these trees showing off! The
elevation offers a more definitive sense of you
are here, one that’s harder to hold onto back down on earth where the
graves are silent as light and each thudding footfall seems to punctuate impermanence.
Wind isn’t wind but ghosts in the graveyard. And on Saturday afternoon, back
down on earth, everything felt leaden in its temporariness. I looked for
someone who I hoped also might be walking there that day. I needed a reminder: you
are not a ghost.