Retrospective

1

Each time we drive past
a garden of gray stones,
we hush the music --
mute Sufjan Stevens
or strains of folk:
"Ain't no grave
gonna hold my body
down"--
for a moment we've borrowed
an international friend's tradition.
With us to celebrate
an American Thanksgiving,
he's patient with our questions:
What does he love about his homeland?
The food. The history of centuries
piled one atop another.
Every time someone calls 
something "old" here,
I just laugh.

2


Heavy with our feast,
we take the tonic
of air and earth,
slip under hot wires
and walk the pasture's
uneven ground
to visit a single stone
at the timber's edge
and rediscover
limestone words
in grass and brambles
under the naked trees:
Died Feb 1, 1848.
In a civilization shifty
as a snow globe,
this is old.

3

We were very favorably impressed
with the country (his sister said) and thought 
we had very good soil for cultivation 
but did not think those large prairies
would ever be so thickly settled
as they are now. *

4

Astonishingly, after one hundred and sixty-seven years,
the characters still flourish like careful marks
from an old-fashioned hand. November-numb
fingers trace grooves, follow the circular swirl
embellishing the "A" in "Aged," the leaflet
curve of a grooved numeral, the fine line leading
to a "Y."

Surely such care denotes some kind of love:
the craftsman for his craft,
the loved ones for the remembered,
even our present attention added
to the attention of those others.

5

When I die, says Nouwen,
love continues to be active . . . . **

6

In the city again, I move my things
from one apartment to another.
I survey rooms reduced
of all that made them mine,
all the small enfleshments
of an inner life. Small, empty
stretch of carpet, ceiling, neutral walls:  
my place knows me no more.

7

It is the second week of Advent.
In half-occupied new rooms,
I snuff two candles.
Smoke curls upwards
like calligraphy, smells
like my grandma's water closet,
and, oddly, like incense.

* quoted from History of McDonough County. "Reminiscence of Martitia F. Harris." Published 1878. [Martitia is my great-great-great grandmother.]

** quoted from Henri Nouwen's Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and the Spirit, "The Pathway of Living and Dying."