Wildwood

Cast me ashes as the sky winds fly
by sea or lake, hill or vail
Don’t matter to me where my ashes’ll be
Just carve me a name in Wildwood
 
Cast me ashes, cast them by 
over desert, canyon or mountainside
Don’t matter to me where my ashes lie
Just leave me a stone in Wildwood
 
Or cast me ashes in this hallowed ground
on the wooded slope with my ancestors
Don’t matter say I, where my ashes lie
Just carve me a stone in Wildwood
 
Six generations here on this slope 
and a good three more on the hills beyond
Don’t matter to me if you know or not
Just leave me a stone in Wildwood
 
Scanning the graves on this Eastern slope
I know deep down, my time will come
I carry an ease, a solace, a peace
with a spot ever after in Wildwood
 
Anora Sutherland McGaha
Dec 8 2017 - Mar 24, 2025
Descended from hundreds, including the youngest son of Henry Adams of Braintree.
​

Let us go up to Wildwood,
Haven on a starry hill,
Where one by one beneath their names
Those we love lie still,
Still as the shadows touch them
And the west pales from its red,
Still in the fresh September night
The mists creep o'er the dead.

Is it ghosts that walk in Wildwood,
Or only living trees,
That shimmer past beneath the stars
And touch us with the breeze?
This tender frail beseeching,
This presence tremulous,
Is it man to earth outreaching?
Is it earth that yearns for us?

Let us go up to Wildwood,
And think on men we knew,
Who from the peace wherein they lie,
Brother of earth and tree and sky,
Still through their quenchless love draw nigh
And watch to keep us true.

- John Erskine, Prof at Amherst College
(probably written between 1903-1909)