Any step in a cemetery is a step into the past. I went to Mt. Hope today to finish up some family history that I’ve been working on this summer about my mother’s twin half-sisters who died in a fire at the Rochester Orphan Asylum in 1901.

Mt. Hope is actually a metaphor for life, not death. Some parts are flat and paved – easy walking. Others are hilly with uneven brick or dirt trails. Some of the markers are very clear and easy to read; others worn away and illegible.

I’ve been to Mt. Hope before, but today I found out that my family plot is in the same flat section as a more well-known Rochesterian, Adelaide Crapsey. That must make us almost cousins, doesn’t it?

Adelaide was a poet, who had a tragic life and died at the age of 36, but she left behind a legacy. Adelaide invented a poetic form known as the cinquain (sing-cane.) A cinquain is a short unrhyming poem of only five lines consisting of two, four, six, eight, and then two syllables each.

Here’s my attempt at a cinquain in honor of my twin aunts.

Twin aunts

hide under bed

to escape smoke and fire.

Now, cradled in Mt. Hope, they speak

through me.

Day 242: 11,012 Steps YTD: 2,197,238 Steps Goal: 2,277,000 Steps