Joanne Giannino's poem in eulogy, Love remembered

Love remembered

Agudas Achim Cemetery, August 31, 2017

As I take my place

Standing a little back, behind the immediate family                   

The rabbi says,

“Now at the grave,

we know for sure that we will not see her again.”

I see the open hole – carved from the earth –

roots reaching out across the chasm created by the sheer cut

perhaps from the tree behind me

its underground limbs

circling above all the bodies of the dead

in their concrete tombs

the simple wood coffins encased but not unreachable:

“We are here with you,” they say.

Of course I thought none of this then,

Only – look, there in that hole in the ground is Dotty,

A woman whom I loved, and loved me.

And, we, none of us will see her smile again.

She is gone from us.

The rabbi says prayers and then gives instructions

To help in this task of certainty:

To shovel earth on top of the casket (to bury her)

To fill the hole dug for her

from which she will not leave

And to encourage us to begin the slow process of grieving.

He shows us: take the shovel from the pile of earth,

Turn it first upside down to feel your reluctance

Take a little earth, cast it onto the casket.

He does. The thud resonates.

Second turn it right side up to assist in the work,

perform a final kindness for her,

a mitzvah.

He does. Another thud.

With a firm slice, he returns the shovel to the pile.

Suddenly, workers appear

in tattered boots and

decidedly not funeral clothes

They move assuredly among the mourners,

over the grass, around the pile of earth,

they lower a concrete slab, then another

to form a solid covering over the casket

while those closest to her throw flowers

to kiss her one last time:

something soft to touch her

before she is gone from them, forever.

Then we take turns as instructed.

I throw my two shovelfuls and

try not to hear the thud nor

see the growing mound below.

Two young men, her grandson and a nephew,

take their time,

place a shovelful tenderly

into each of the four corners,

and along the sides of the grave,

carefully, as she might have

as she filled a baking pan

making a cake for one of them,

smoothing out the batter

so it would lay (rise)

just right.

Joanne Giannino

31.8.17-7.9.17                                                 

Joanne Giannino

Ellen Mass sends four for her leave-taking gift to us

 

Picture of Ellen large enough to see her, taken last year when we met downstairs.

The Reservation

We search and steward this place

With surprising green and blue resources

With feelings of human-animal kin,

Both of us, urban and threatened

A wild place, filled with tiny warblers in spring and fall

Palm, yellow rump, blue black, green, chestnut- sided, parula*,

They bless us against fixation, fleeting and moving

to seasonal habitat far away

This urban respite becomes open business season for deadly intrusion

With warblers and kindred species soon wasted by asphalt soils.

                                                                      

Synesthesia

Magnetic relations between 2 talkers

Obsessed with repartee’, mundane or not

Minimize all reality around

Absenting the sweet spirits of other souls

Touting kindness and gentility

between their tiny connecting thread of understanding

With feathered  heads bobbing above water

Nature disdains this mindless chatter

I see timidity floating quietly

The animal’s humility submerged

Alternatively, I see stars brighten

And the two drowning chatterers

calling over that deep water for survival.

Kingfisher

Female with chestnut belt

During 40 mph into the River

With ta-ta-ta-ta-ta

Almost invisible to ragged crested,

Blue as miniature jay,

At home in the dirt mound we dug

for her ease and breeding.

Labored with love the entry and exit doors

That business volunteers created

Little did they sense their shoveling was mere

Community service

For this miraculous marathon flyer

Dangerous Feeder

Watching feeder-- Comes purple finch,

Red as they come,

Jittery, paranoid as human suspicion

On the alert

Cooperative and fussy amongst peers

Long neck bobber

One by one seed from my feeder

Long surveillance

of my busy landscape

Danger may be anywhere.

Then on to next feeder

Crafty spotted one.  She overlooks nothing.

Two poems by Carol Youmans

Carol Waller Youmans

Take down the

Sleek

Shrieking

Emblems of greed and corruption

Degrading the ridges’ calm

By humans so far removed from nature’s touch,

Perspective, alignment, understanding,

They destroy rather than revere.

They think when God gave them dominion

(as the scriptures say)

She meant exploiters not stewards,

Reverence, honor, humility, not slaughter.

But they will not destroy the earth.

Earth will win when our teeming terms shut down.

When the last of the swarming, brawling, quarrelling race

Asphyxiates or starves or drowns,

The earth will go on serene and free of mange.

Carol Youmans

Barton, August 2017

I’ve written about this before,

But you haven’t heard how poems

Have driven me from bed to pin the words

Down before they pop like bubbles and wetly disappear.

I wrote once that a poem had written

Me one morning:

“the words bubbled up in finished wholes,

                        clean as though I’d read them.”

Morning moments on just waking are rich for me:

Images shimmer airily behind my sleep-slugged eyes

And if I don’t have a fast pen

On the floor near my bed and something to write on,

They’ll get away – swept out of my head

By the day’s bright start and a cat

That needs feeding.

Carol Youmans

Barton, August 2017