I saw a funeral train this morning. Standing on the Braddock Road Metro station platform. The train was on the next track over. Holding row after row of stacked coffins wrapped in plastic. From Belledune, New Brunswick, Canada. Dead trees. Trimmed and smoothed. Stacked on pallets and shrouded in shrink wrap. Headed somewhere toward reincarnation. As a house. Or commercial building. Or barn. Or some other sort of box to hold stuff or plants or people or other animals of the non-people variety.
There was no black bunting draping the dead. No one weeping by the side of the train. No pomp and circumstance. No funeral dirges. Nothing but the low clouds and spitting snowflakes to set an appropriate tone: cold, damp, grey. Sad.
I said a prayer anyway.
"Mea culpe."
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About Me
- Mark Gorman
- I was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, along the banks of the Susquehanna River, in the valley made up by Bald Eagle Mountain to the south, and gentle hills and valleys to the north. That place that sheltered me, gave me food and friends, and both physical and spiritual nourishment for 18 years. That is the space where I was physically and emotionally formed. Ever since growing up there . . . because of growing up there . . . I have been inexorably linked to nature . . . to the earth and to all life.