I have caught your voice, recorded
in the looping rhythms,
repeating in your memory,
a form less graceful than a phonograph
for all its digital accuracy.
Confirmation that I waited too long to
ask my questions,
but at least I did my part
in the youngest role and asked
the four required--
and maybe more.
Your stories repeated,
a genesis,
but it was not your fault;
from the legacy of broken marrow, bones,
I called out to you years too late
to truly know
the influences of your red youth,
your poetic friendships borne of revolutions,
the language you rejected to run away
and pursue the impetuousness of youth.
How can I know
the lessons you've imparted; learned?
What arts have I from you,
what books, what iambs?
I can not have learned enough--
there are lessons I know you could have taught
(your mother's stroke; your father's words),
if I had but the wisdom to observe.
Strange to think of you, gone,
while I walk on in uncertainty.
All I can wish for you
and me
is peace in all our highs and lows,
exalted more than the unimportant,
all-important everyday life,
while I struggle to recite:
yit'gadol v'yit'kadash...
Author notes
I wrote this the night I heard that my Great Aunt had passed away.
She was an amazing woman with one of the most interesting life stories-- she had grown up with a father who was an author and an artist mother, both of whom were communists; she ran away and hitch-hiked across the country with one of her friends when she was in high school (in the 1930s) because she did badly on a French test; she started a huge and successful court reporting business with her husband in NYC; she was an avid reader of books and had a long-term pen-pal friendship with Irish poet Robert Greacen; she was intelligent, passionate, and generous...
She will be missed.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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line 33: and I --> and me
This is beautiful! I'm left almost speechless at the end of your loving and exceptional tribute. Every line is a treasure, but two phrases stuck out while reading ("Your stories repeated, / a genesis," and "what books, what iambs?") as truly memorable. Your poem is wonderful and very skillfully written.
I think your Great Aunt would be proud.
-K
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