RDP Tuesday: MOSS

Photographer Unknown

Upon occasion I go out and pictures of gravestones- and as a rule I don’t stage my shots so what you see is exactly what I saw.

Leaves, twigs, wildlife or the odd beer can or Barbie Doll ( I’m still wondering about that one, they turn up on random headstones and as far as I can tell they’re not the usual gift someone leaves for a child because they are next to stones that are old, in some cases the names are worn away ).

Of course, there is always going to be an exception to the rule and in this case my curiosity go the better of me.

It happened in May. It was  warm and sunny. The grounds hadn’t been watered for awhile and the grasses smelled dusty.  I remember I was wearing my favorite purple t-shirt.

On this exceptional day I reached down and I rested my hand on a cool green patch of moss creeping up the side of a gravestone and I moved a bit of the moss aside.

It was a soft patch of moss but when I took my hand away some of the moves shifted and I saw the crumbling stone under it.

I did the same to another gravestone a little ways away.

Or course I’ve seen what moss does to concrete, but there was something a little more sinister, maybe even insidious  about those patches of moss I saw on these gravestones.

Just a splash of color, soft to the touch, an innocent patch of moss quietly pulverizing the last traces of a long dead couple and someone’s forever child.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso