Rain, Eagles, and Brokedown Palace: A Morning at Hollywood Cemetery

This morning, I headed out under cloudy skies for Meandering the Markers, a 90-minute writing and reflection workshop I hosted at Hollywood Cemetery. Designed as a space for creative and contemplative exploration, the session invites participants to tune in—to the stories etched in stone, the quiet around them, and their own inner landscape. 

Even with the steady rain, one dedicated participant showed up, notepad in hand. We moved our chairs beneath the shelter of Palmer Chapel, a beautiful spot overlooking the James River. From there, we could see two bald eagles perched on the large rocks in the middle of the river. I wished for binoculars—my phone’s zoom wasn’t enough to fully capture the moment—but their presence was unmistakable and grounding. 

As we sat with the sound of rain and river, she spoke about music that moves her, the kind of songs that stay with you like old friends. 

After the session, we walked together to find the grave of someone she knew. 

On our way back, we paused in front of a headstone inscribed with the words: 

"Going home, going home 

By the waterside I will rest my bones

Listen to the river sing sweet songs 

to rock my soul."

The lyrics were perfectly suited for the place. What poem was this? I wasn't familiar. 

I looked it up when I got home and smiled—lyrics from Brokedown Palace by the Grateful Dead. It felt like everything had come together in quiet harmony: the eagles, the river, the rain, the music, and memory. 

The poem this morning wasn’t just something we wrote—it was something we witnessed. 

Sometimes, poetry finds us when we least expect it. It rises in the rhythm of conversation, in shared silence, or on the wings of birds sitting by the water. Sometimes, it’s carved in stone, waiting for someone to pause long enough to read it. And sometimes, it’s all of these things at once.

Poems about Fortune Tellers, Crows, and a Pantoum

This week in my "Twelve Poets to Change Your Life," we read poems by Gwendolyn Brooks & Linda Pastan. Here are three poems inspired by their work. 

One Wants a Teller in a Time Like This 

 

One Wants a Teller in a Time Like This 

A fortune teller who can predict how to bear this business alone. 

A clairvoyant trained in psychography with an old set of Tarot cards 

spread out by her crystal ball. 

One cannot put a coin in the machine 

that spits out a prediction knowing for sure what the future will bring. 

It is certain if or why or how 

One wants a Teller now. 

 

Like Pythia, Don’t Count On It 

or Nostradamus Concentrate and Ask Again 

or Swedenborg, As I see it, yes 

or Edgar Cayce, Very doubtful 

or Jeane Dixon, Better not tell you now 

or the Fox Sisters, (thump, thump) Outlook good. 

 

Behold— 

The Magic Eight Ball 

Reply hazy. Try again later. 

              *Inspired by “One Wants a Teller in a Time Like This” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Before an Elegy with Crows 

 

I.
 

They launch themselves from the crooked wires—
 

five crows, sometimes six—
 

in bursts of laughter,
 

black air punching the morning peace.
 

Then the banging:
 

chimney caps rattled like war drums,
 

garbage can lids struck by their tiny hands.
 

Your roof for their concert,
 

as if they know the end is near
 

and want to mark it with noise.

II.
 

Their racket pierces like the rain
 

on your trailer roof back in Washington—
 

a hard, ceaseless drumming
 

you once mistook for comfort.
 

But these are strange omens,
 

crows lit by the glow of a dumpster fire
 

three streets down,
 

wings glinting orange like they’ve flown through hell
 

and brought back its warmth.

III.
 

There is nothing left to let in.
 

You’ve closed the door, sealed the vents,
 

shut out the last of the light.
 

Still, they find cracks,
 

their cries slipping in sideways,
 

a final intrusion of the world
 

before it forgets your name.

IV.
 

The crows do not flee.
 

They settle like smoke.
 

An uncanny stillness,
 

a hovering that doesn’t blink?
 

And they wait—
 

until you cannot.
 

No silence rises after their song,
 

only the sky,
 

and the sound of fire eating air.

                                           

                                       *Inspired by “The Deathwatch Beetle” by Linda Pastan.

There was an age when I was most like myself. 

Letters sent in envelopes with second chances, 

Refusing the new while holding onto the old, 

Remembering how it felt before their death. 

Letters sent in envelopes with second chances, 

Folded into prayers that I released into the wild. 

Remembering how it felt before their death, 

Each of their words vanishing across the page before my eyes. 

Folded into prayers that I released into the wild. 

Their declarations confessed on college-ruled loose leaf, 

Each of their words vanishing across the page before my eyes. 

Sealed in a grave that nobody visits. 

Their declarations confessed on college-ruled loose leaf. 

Refusing the new while holding onto the old, 

Sealed in a grave that nobody visits, 

There was an age when I was most like myself. 

                      *A pantoum inspired by “Something About the Trees” by Linda Pastan.

Poetry, poets, and books: another day longing for literary trails

I'm currently taking a course, "Twelve Poets to Change Your Life," with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg through TLAN. We started with Emily Dickinson—so naturally, she’s been blooming in my thoughts lately. 

I spent much of my weekend in the garden. I'm happiest when I have dirt under my fingernails. After repotting plants and tending to those friends in the ground, I finished reading the spring sections of Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell.

Flowers, poetry, and the quiet joy of digging in the earth. 

The second poet of focus this week is Walt Whitman. I  appreciate his ability to celebrate the individual spirit and the vastness of the American experience through imagery. His poetry inspires a sense of connection and self-reflection that feels timeless. 

I used one of the course prompts to compose my own poem, aiming to capture a personal perspective while honoring the tone that characterizes Whitman’s work.

My 51st Year

After the crest of half a century,


Through fog and flame, the spare seasons, the scattered joys,


My mother’s silence now a constant hum,


My father yearning to breathe free— almost eighty-seven,
gathering the light like bread, breaking it.

A new post— in halls once proud with purpose,


Now flickering, ivy fading, gasping in the marble—


Academia, fallen cold and dying? Or maybe just unvalued,


Scorned by those who forget who first opened the page for them.

The world at war again, though not always declared —


the homeless refused, children buried, cities razed— 

the names change,


but death is always the same.

 

And on Flag Day we’re told


to raise banners for a fool in a suit,


those clapping their own backs while


the hungry, tempest-tost, are hushed. 

Yet still — I lift my lamp beside the coffin door, walking —


through campus corridors, past empty chairs,


through streets that forget themselves,


past memorials that call only in whispers.

I reflect still. I write still.


Reporting in — not to salute, but to stand,


and not in uniform,


but with pen and pulse,


that glows with world-wide welcome.

Of course, literature reminds me of my other place to be—the cemetery. While people complain of humidity, especially this time of year, I long to be soaked in my own sweat in a cemetery on a mission to find a story of an author. How I am daydreaming about visiting Dickinson's grave in West Cemetery in Auborn.

These thoughts draw me back to another book, my copy of Literary Trail of Greater Boston by Susan Wilson, which was published when I lived in Massachusetts. Revisiting its pages reignited my interest in the places that connect writers to the landscapes they inhabited. When I lived there, I was a poor high school English teacher just out of grad school with little income and a hefty student loan, so I did not have much leisure time to visit all the places in Wilson's guidebook but I did walk the streets following the tour paths. I went to Walden Pond walking the path to Thoreau's cabin site. 

Now, sitting here on my porch, I’m itching to return and walk the grounds of Forest Hills Cemetery, pay tribute to the poets buried at Mount Auburn, and stand at Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—places where the presence of literary voices still lingers.