The weather was warm for a late May day,
The sky was grey and threatened rain;
Normally I would have stayed at home,
But guilt encouraged me on my way
To visit graves of those I’d known.
So I drove in silence to where they lay
In a cemetery outside of town,
A pleasant place, if not for death,
Where one might picture children’s play.
But the dead were there, and all around,
Their memories upon me pressed,
As frail as wisp around my head,
Like stone they lay upon my chest.
I moved among the many plots
Where neat brass markers broke the grass
To reveal the spot where someone lay,
Inside some dark and loamy space.
Father, mother, brothers two,
An uncle, niece, assorted friends
Were sown beneath that rolling ground,
Their bones in place and souls unbound.
I wished to know where they had gone
And of their thoughts of who I’d been,
And ask forgiveness for the wrongs
I’d done by small and major sins.
Despite the fights which sometimes raged,
I wished to feel their love again
To know the comfort of their kiss,
The sweet embrace they held me in.
I wanted us together then,
Vital as when all alive,
To inhale the smells of fertile dirt,
And feel the warmth of golden skies.
But silence reigned that cloudy day.
Their answers, muffled by their bones,
Would have to wait that other day
When I come back once more to stay.
So sensing that our time was up
With nothing more that might be known,
I took my leave of those I loved,
And journeyed back to town.
- Finding the Light of G‑d, pages 150-151