Place 1: Not-logs and Underbrush

Sunday September 6, 2009 6:15pm

I’ve chosen a place inside the Allegheny Cemetery in Bloomfield: a clearing beyond a gate meant to keep out cars. A “No Dumping” sign stands next to the gate. Some of Pittsburgh's most prominent families are buried in this cemetery, and directions to the no-dumping ground read like directions to get around the city: hang a right at Negley, keep going a few minutes past Hobart. But here Negley is General James Scott Negley, dignified in mute relief carving, and Hobart is a stark white cube near a thicket.

This clearing drew me in because in all my visits to this cemetery I never noticed it - and because it seemed off-limits. The grass has been cleared away and the ground consists of light brown dirt and stones and pebbles of various sizes. There isn’t anywhere terribly comfortable to sit down, no bench or soft grass, so I sit in the dirt, in the middle of the clearing. Fuzzy grasses grow around the edges, and so many trees. I arrive to find three wild turkeys grazing. As I enter the clearing they slowly pick their way away from me, over chopped logs and through foliage, delicately disappearing, as if by accident, as if to pretend that their exit is merely coincidence.

I hear a bird call overhead, perhaps a crow. I want to learn the different bird calls and insect hums. The turkeys rustle the leaves. They are hidden behind me and I can hear but not see them. A big heap of dirt is piled on one side of the clearing.

I hear the faint whoosh of traffic in the background, church bells, bird calls, the traffic almost indistinguishable from the sound of wind through trees, the perpetual urban generators melding with the song of crickets and birds.

Plane trails streak the sky, ramshackle crisscrosses, the far ends of the trails tapering and compact, the near ends expanding into loose linear fuzz. Strange how our mark is even on the skies: wordless skywriting. The sky is pale blue with a hazy thin layer of clouds. The sun has begun to sink in the western sky.

I stand up from the dusty pebbled ground and walk the perimeter of the clearing. Now part of the mystery of this place reveals itself – the pile that I thought from a distance was squared-off logs, chopped neatly and stacked like firewood, is actually a pile of pinked marble, maybe discards from gravesites… or stone for markers to be cut from. It must be stone for future markers. It’s a morbid surprise that the logs are gravestones waiting for their dead. I don’t like that thought and feel nearly tearful as I approach the rectangular stacks, pick over them with my eyes the way the turkeys did with their beaks.

I turn back to the clearing and the large heap of dirt. Is this dirt for filling graves? Is this dirt taken out of the graves to make room for what goes in? Behind the dirt heap, a precipice leads down a ragged graveless hillside, so dark at the bottom.

I sneeze, and for a moment the bird cries, which had become constant, stop. Now only the layered buzz of twilight insects. Without the birds it seems empty and too quiet. Past the piles of marble slabs, leafy vines have grown over the ragged underbrush creating a green-roofed dwelling dark with a thousand eyes.