Grave Count

Perfect day for the yearly grave count, the correct combination of recent rain and fallen leaves. Before I walk over, I set out a change of clothes, the alcohol and a rag, to deal with the ticks. As expected the shallow depressions of sunken graves are filled with rotted leaves. I count 23, which is within my usual spread (sometimes I count 26, other times 19). I sit on my graveyard stump and smoke, have a nip, recount, come up with 23. I'll come back in the winter, when the graves resemble small skating rinks, and count them again. Home, I strip down, bag the clothes, and wipe down with alcohol. A cup of tea, and I settle down to read. A raft of things I dug out last night to comb through. I'd run across the phrase 'fraying stock' in reference to what I've always called a deer rub (scraping the velvet off horns, getting ready for battle and sex), and I thought it a lovely turn. That use of the word 'fraying' caught my ear, and I remember it from several books on venery. I raised a hawk, one summer at the playhouse on Cape Cod, and I learned a lot about raptors. Fray, also, in the sense of wearing down. I looked forward to a day buried in dictionaries, though I spent most of the morning buried in books on falconry. I had meant to go to town, had a list and the hardware store was holding a threshold part for me, but I had enough of everything to see me through the weekend. When the seasons change, I always read Basho:

in your medicinal garden
which flowers should be
my night's pillow

1644 to 1694, he lived, and that poem is from 1689. He died in Osaka, beginning another hike. The journals of the hikes are wonderful. Like Thoreau, he notices everything, and nothing is beneath his notice, water dancers, skirting across a puddle, the webs of fall spiders, deciphering animal tracks. We're always reconstructing events from scant evidence. What else can we do? I'm pretty sure your cows ate my pea crop. I hope they enjoyed it.