Bury Me: A Poem

I’ve been meaning to write more travel poetry, considering how many places I’ve seen, so this month’s poem focuses on cathedrals, but it also concerns death and writers. This summer, I had the privilege of going back to London, this time with one of my best friends and fellow writers, Faith Boggus. On this particular trip, we saw many places I hadn’t been to before, including Westminster Abbey.

Not only is it the famous designated cathedral for crowning monarchs, but it’s also the resting place of over two-thousand famous persons from kings and queens to scientists and people whose stones have been tread on so much nobody can decipher the names anymore. Perhaps the section that stands out most in my mind is Poets’ Corner, the section where many famous writers have been buried who were influential throughout English Literature.

As I’ve traveled throughout Europe, I’ve found that no two churches are the same, no matter what anybody else says. Even buildings similar in architecture cannot have the same frescos or people buried in the floor. Yes, they have buried people in the floor. And if you think that’s more disturbing than a cemetery, the Sedlec Ossuary (Prague, Czech Republic) has decorations made of hundreds of human bones. It’s definitely something I will never forget.

Bury Me

I’m surrounded by a forest of words,

these weathered leaves and bleeding ink
sticky as pine sap, with branches from Geoffrey Chaucer
to Arthur Conan Doyle stretching to the sky.

Don’t ask me why I find comfort

among the dead words, written on forest green and jet-black spines,
the tombstones of authors lined up on a shelf.
Their eulogies are in their lasting words,
coming to life and dancing across the attic of my mind,
sweeping away cobwebs of boredom and dust from life’s stress,
unpacking emotions, thoughts, and dreams I never knew I had.
Read me a story, mommy. That child buries her nose in a book
when she should be making friends. If worms eat up the decay of earth,
what are full-grown bookworms, devouring leaf after leaf?

I set foot in a gray abbey, each step echoing across the halls
of time. Nobody told me the place was a tomb.
The hall of kings and queens, ancestors and forgotten names—
their tombstones worn on the floor from countless feet—
poets survived by words. I’ve gasped at rows of books,
but never before have I been surrounded by rows of dead authors.

My search for Lewis’ plaque discovered Chaucer,

Eliot, Dryden. I stopped before Spenser and Milton,
marveling how life is oft’ separated by generations,
but in death two poets are separated by stone a book’s width.
Poor Dickens denied his last request;
my friend was standing on his grave.
I passed over countless corpses under the floor—
would that I could recall their names,
but I’m awful with remembering the names of the living.

Weeks ago, I jokingly told my mother

that should I die before I turn twenty-five
burn me like the Vikings of old.
Forget a sorry cremation when I’m ground to dust,
but give me a pyre fit for a book burning.
But in all seriousness, I’d rather rest
under the green leaves of a willow.
Let the trees weep and do not cry—
I’ll let my tombstone etch a weathered lullaby,
drowned in rain and washed away—
Do not cry. We all must die. 

***

Let’s chat. What’s the most sobering place you’ve ever visited? Which author(s), living or dead would you like to meet/have met?

Living Under a Rock

Typically, the first year I live anywhere is a blur. It’s that unsettling year of confusion trying to find out how a place works and figuring out how to make a routine and friendships. The first and only year I lived in El Paso, Texas is an exception. I remember lots of things—the mountains and the view of Mexico from my bedroom window, the day we had to put our dog down, the afternoons I spent riding and grooming my horse Connie, and starting community college.

I remember when I was signing up for my classes in community college and my advisor sat me down, glanced at my high school records, and asked if I didn’t want to major in law instead of English. Essentially, why would anybody want to waste talent on studying a language they already speak? I was flattered at the remark on my previous grades, but I stuck with English anyway and breezed my way through my freshman year.

As the spring semester rolled around, my dad received orders to move to Germany. And I was determined that I would go along with my family. There was only one problem—my education. How would I manage to major in English in a non-English speaking country? After much consideration, and several changes of plans, I ended up attending Evangel University that fall.

And many more things changed.

I still majored in English but I also took up a minor in writing and joined Epiphany, the university’s literary magazine staff. But it didn’t take me long to learn that university life was much harder than community college. I panicked when I received my first D on an essay, and not for lack of trying. Having been used to getting all As, such a grade was an unheard of disaster. And while I adjusted to a new level of work, I never quite got used to the reading lists—there were so many readings lists for so many literature classes.

Sitting in British Literature one day, staring at the assigned texts for our course, I realized that I recognized most of the titles but had only ever read maybe one or two of them. And I was an English major! Looking at my friend and classmate, Faith, I said, “I feel like I’ve been living under a rock my whole life.”

Wasn’t I supposed to be a bookworm? How was it that twenty books for a college class should make me feel so ignorant? That semester passed, and the next, and the next. Now that I’m in grad school studying English literature, I still don’t think much has changed. Yes, I’ve read countless books in the past four years, but I’ve also learned that there is so much more to learn.

Studying English in my undergraduate gave me some of the basics, and majoring in English literature at a postgraduate level showed me there are even more things to learn, let alone read. I may have taken a class on Shakespeare, but I haven’t read all his plays. I have studied A Tale of Two Cities, The Faerie Queene, and The Great Gatsby, but I have yet to read Great Expectations, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and 1984. And my to-be-read (TBR) list is ever growing.

Studying English has given me a mere sampling of the world’s literature. It’s shown me that learning is a continual process and that there’s more to being an English major than being a Grammar Nazi. (Which I’m not by the way. I don’t want hold people up to such standards when I can’t spell half the time.) And it’s like my mom used to say, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” I don’t have to feel like I’ve lived under a rock my whole life, basking in ignorance just because I had different experiences.

Connie

I may not have read Les Miserables yet, but I’ve seen Paris twice during summer break visiting my family in Germany. I may not have studied Antony and Cleopatra, but I got to see it performed at the Globe Theatre. I may not have read Black Beauty, but Connie had a beauty of her own despite her shy, awkward temperament. 

On the other hand, I’ve visited Israel with Sherlock Holmes in O, Jerusalem when I might never visit in person while turmoil continues. Through reading, I’ve seen fictional worlds such as Narnia, Middle Earth, and Hogwarts. I’ve even visited Mars within the pages of Out of the Silent Planet and A Princess of Mars.

So no, I haven’t lived under a rock my whole life, though sometimes it feels like it. There’s just more places to discover, more books to read, and less to take for granted—even the ordinary days when I’m at home with family and a shelf full of books. 

Have you ever felt like you’ve lived under a rock when considering what you haven’t read? How many books are on your TBR list?

Literary references: Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations, Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, George Orwell’s 1984, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars.