Diane Vogel Ferri’s full-length poetry book is Everything is Rising (Luchador Press). Her latest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling (Atbosh Media) Her essays have been published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Blue Heron Review, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). She has done many poetry readings locally. Diane’s essay, “I Will Sing for You” was featured at the Cleveland Humanities Festival in 2018. A former teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland. Her poem, For You, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net 2023

Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Potter's Field


As we were coming home last night from dinner, my husband suddenly pulled into a drive that we'd both been past hundreds of times. We'd heard about it, but never gone in. It is the Potter's Field for the City of Cleveland. The only thing to see is this memorial stone. There were a few plastic flowers and a makeshift wooden cross at its base.
I looked it up and discovered that it was established in 1904 for poor, homeless and unclaimed bodies. Older graves marked by wooden crosses have disappeared over the years, so it is just a lot of grassy area surrounded by trees. A peaceful resting place. It is part of Highland Park Cemetery in Highland Hills, but the records are kept by Cleveland.
It makes you wonder how many people rest there - and why? It makes you think how blessed you are if there are people in your life who love and care about you - who will miss you when you're gone.
Here lies the body of a man who died
Nobody mourned, nobody cried
How he lived, how he fared
Nobody knows, nobody cared.
John Starkwether

2 comments:

RachelW said...

The kind of place from which stories are wrought.

John Ettorre said...

Boy, what a well-timed reminder, Diane. I've thought of visiting there a hundred times or more, every time I see some mention of it, and never seem to get around to it. Early June seems like a great time to finally making it happen.