Scott Edward Anderson's Poetry Blog

My son Walker went to a Quaker school outside of Philadelphia for 2nd through 4th grades, Plymouth Meeting Friends School. For Poetry Month on April 27, 2011, I came to his class at the invitation of his primary teacher, Debbie Bakan, to explore writing poetry in the graveyard on the campus. The students were instructed to observe, take notes, and write poems. I did too.

I was recently reminded of the poem I wrote that morning, “The Quaker Graveyard in Plymouth Meeting,” which I sent to Debbie and her assistant Liz, so they could share it with the students when they read their own poems in class later that week. Looking at the original, I note that, while I later removed a superfluous couplet that sat like a sore thumb between the two six-line stanzas, the rest remains exactly as it was written—or perhaps dictated to me by spirits—in the graveyard.

The title and epigraph are a nod to a famous poem by Robert Lowell, “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” which was written in the memory of Lowell’s cousin Warren Winslow, who died at sea during World War II. Here is my poem, “The Quaker Graveyard in Plymouth Meeting,” which appears in my book Wine-Dark Sea: New & Selected Poems & Translations:  

The Quaker Graveyard in Plymouth Meeting

“The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.” – Robert Lowell

A field of marble and granite boulders,

Grave markers of long dead Friends;

Their stones sunk in the ground or sinking,

Becoming one with the earth—

“Coulston,” “Skeen,” and “Livesey”;

“Tomlinson,” “Webster,” and “Foulke.”


My eye is caught by a pinwheel spinning

Propped up by a fresh-cut stone:

The grave of a toddler, named

For a tree that weeps.

Her gifts too early left this Earth;

Her body returned too soon.


(in memory of “Willow Ann Donaldson, Aug 5, 2007-Dec 27, 2008”)

–Scott Edward Anderson

27 April 2011

PMFS grounds

For Debbie & Liz’s class