March, 2026
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A Visit to the Cemetery
I visit the local cemetery today
And pick out my gravesite.
I have visited and walked at this cemetery before,
But had never imagined spending eternity there.
I go with my son
Who is visiting from the other side of the continent,
Speaking of other sides.
The cemetery borders conservation lands
And we pick out a spot near a young oak tree.
Not so close as to disturb its roots
But close enough to feed her,
Having chosen what is known as a green burial
In which I become compost
In proximity to the Earth which bore me.
At one point, my legs became numb
And I lost my balance
Reaching instinctively for my son’s hand
As he helped hold me up
Which he’s so often done.
We talked about gravestones
And made light of inevitability and loss
I visualized being brought here at some future date
Laid to rest and covered with the soil I adore
While dozens of crows called out
Welcoming me to the neighborhood.
Just not too soon I hope.
(c) brt 03/26
POETRY
Two poems – Yehuda Amichai
“The Place Where We Are Right”
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
“A Man Doesn’t Have Time in His Life “
A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.
Boplicity or Jimmy Throws a Houseparty for Huey Newton – Daniel B. Summerhill
| inertia’s at the front door lobbying for a way into the funk but packed the wrong tools, left blues back where bebop jumped over the hammer. sold God’s imagination short. now we’re here dancing again, Bessie’s song got my hips loose & what goods a revolution without a two-step? beloved, there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there tonight, in Oakland, we carve up maplewood in steel-toe boots, stomp keys into the myth of whiteness. uncle sam’s teeth rattle. Huey clinks the bars with Plato’s Republic between here and LA, conjures the one & three count. american chaos. bass haunts the dichotomy, counterproduces the violence. troubles innocence. tonight in Oakland, the party is everywhere & we cant distinguish one riff from another. black smoke funnels out the attic & the lamp shade’s crooked from the kickdrum beloved, (i said) there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there i’m trading in my gold tooth for a hand grenade at the back door: morning glory, milkweed, poppy. the rest have names too, distinct & communal as sin. would you believe me if i told you miracles were small enough to hold? scorched amber. night blooms. forgive me, sometimes the light blinds me to the light. beloved, it’s a party tonight. everybodys here |
Who Says Words With My Mouth? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
We are the Trees – J Raymond
I see now, growing old is a luxury.
We ought to focus more on aging gratefully,
than gracefully.
Life isn’t a tree we’re meant to carve our
name into the trunk of.
We are the trees,
and life leaves its mark upon us.
My body will betray me
long before my spirit breaks.
Each wrinkle, a well-earned reminder of all
the ways by face wears happiness.
I’ve lost too many people,
seen enough lights snuffed out early,
to walk these roads begrudgingly.
Or with envy.
Or with anything other than appreciation.
I’ll take every step left affectionately.
When the day comes,
feed the earth our flesh and bones,
knowing that from where we lie
love grows.
