Time Slants

The gearshift came off in my hand as I downshifted through the hills along Forest Hills Cemetery. The old Fairlane was cobbled together, my first car. I pulled over to see if I could reattach the shifter, which, thankfully, fastened to the steering column.

 Beside the road was a rusted gate that led into an overgrown section of Forest Lawn. Potter’s Field was written in wrought iron at the crest. I thought I might be able to find a piece of wire there for a repair. An old concrete bench in two half-moons sat before a large oak, its branches like arms holding the blue sky.

 I walked around and looked for headstones; I found only a few, the names erased by time. This is where the impoverished were buried, few with a headstone, just clay soil, only good for potters and not farmers. It was hard to walk through as the weeds and grass were knee high; vines strangled my legs.

 I found a piece of wire used to hold together a rusted foot-high section of fence. Everything in Potter’s Field seemed to be cobbled together, so, it felt appropriate that I patch my gearshift with the found wire.

 There were no ghosts, or bad dreams, strange sounds through the trees. Traffic buzzed by Mormon Road, where a mile away, at the top of the hill, was Winter Quarters.

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Michael Catherwood is the author of Dare, If You Turned Around Quickly, and Projector from Stephen F. Austin Press. He is former editor at The Backwaters Press and is an Associate Editor at Plainsongs. His poems have appeared in The Common, Pennsylvania English, I-70 Review, and Common Ground Review.