Today’s Count
Few surprises here.
The black iron fence usually bare
But here and there supporting vines stringing purple fruit.
In one spot, a tree trunk embraces the fence
Willingly impaling itself as it stretches to the sky.
Responding productively to the intrusion on its growth.
It conveniently stands adjacent to the sidewalk
Testifying to the mysteries of the cemetery.
The time vested there.
An unnoticed oddity.
The rows of stones of variable heights, sizes
Traversed by grassy pathways.
Occasional red or yellow flowers underneath
Some stones great and fearless
Proclaim their deceased to the world.
Other stones narrow and vulnerable.
Tiny stones, too, jut out from the bare ground,
Some askew, some embedded directly in the earth.
The children lie there.
Dates, some eighty years old, eroded.
Names obscured by time and wind.
No longer documenting memories of their dead.
(Some Hebrew words need not rely upon legibility
So commonplace are their sentiments.)
Today’s count is ten.
This section a favourite
For those mysterious forces responsible for
The ten massive blocks lying prone.
Six hundred pounds each or more.
An act of will, but of whose?
No one says.
The residents on the borders,
The visitors bearing tears and obligation,
The newspapers
Nothing offered but the silence
That attends this place as closely as the grass.
Few people look
Beyond the black iron barrier.
I walk on, my dog alongside.
A family passes, pushing strollers and their most current reports
On children and life.
The cemetery a background.
It’s regular features,
Limited palate of colours, predictable inactivity
A manageable and silent history in our backyards.
Strangely pleasant.
But today’s count was ten.
_________________________________
The Lesson
I heard a child on the street
Sweet chatter of toys games celebrities fast food
Some such moment of spontaneity
Accompanied by laughter
Shared with all within earshot
Collective pleasure, an easy claim.
When is it shattered
By the unnatural knowledge
Bodies violated
Children rejected
Parents hated?
Children learn a new possibility
Their chemistry forever altered.
_________________________________
Attentiveness
You see their teeth?
She remarked to me
The points of the children’s canines?
In my day, we filed those.
Ugly, they are.
Sharp like an animal
Piercing things
Like my attention.
You see yourself, mother?
I would not remark to her
The inattention of your memory?
In your day, you endured his violence.
Ugly, it was.
Sharp, like an animal
Piercing things
Like your selfhood.
_________________________________
Pigeons
The day my shopping buggy broke on the Danforth
Stranded there waiting for a cab to take me home
Nothing to do…
…except watch the birds.
Pigeons embody the quotidian
Collected on urban windowsills
Their detritus a morass below.
But they land steps from me.
Once, twice, three times
Poking through last season’s vegetation
Tossing most of it aside
Selecting an appropriate twig
And carry it off, aloft
Gainful outcome of their domestic project
Steadfast, singular, nonplussed industry
No one’s notice.
_________________________________
Today’s Count
Today’s count was ten.
In this stillness defining open space,
Surprise as alien here as loss designed.
Unseen, untouched, unsullied by thought.
Its bizarre secrets need only the concealment
Of silence.
Today’s count was ten, in this stillness
Amid the rows of stones of irregular heights, sizes, detail.
Traversed by grassy pathways.
Interrupted by the occasional flower, hedge, an ornamental cabbage for the fall.
Thick-stemmed dandelion rising three feet from robust, perennial roots.
Some obelisks great and fearless proclaim their deceased to the world.
Other stones narrow and vulnerable whispering their names.
Some tiny tablets jut out from the bare ground, some askew, some embedded in the earth.
Children.
Early dates eroding from 1913, names obscured by time and wind.
Sturdy modern monuments for forever, symbols cut deep and sure
All craggy records of lives
Rendered only in name, date, In Loving Memory, Sadly Missed.
The Hebrew inscriptions unknowable to me.
A commonality amid diversity: etched floral trims, stars, pillars, finials.
In this stillness defining open space.
Today’s count was ten, surprise alien here…
Yet observe a bizarre union between tree and fence.
The fence, black iron, mostly bare,
Here and there supporting vines stringing purple fruit.
In one spot, a tree, black organism, now bare,
Planted adjacent,
In its infancy they embraced each other, a metal intrusion on the tree’s slow growth skyward.
Two rungs disappear inside the black mystery of trunk, tips emerging five feet higher
The others rungs wrap all round fusing in and out with bark.
The tree impaled, adapted, before it continues upward on its free mission in space.
The fence consumed, bent, before it ends in a spikey dance.
The two objects merging in their blackness so ordinary.
Surprise as alien here as loss designed.
Today’s count was ten, unseen, untouched
But what forces cause the disturbance to the symmetry
Of upright monoliths (of irregular heights, sizes, detail)?
The downing of these massive blocks,
Five hundred pounds, six.
This section a favourite, Benevolent Society?
No concern for proximity to the road,
No pattern discernible, only
The grand kind a likely victim.
The poor and the children spared. So
Ten massive markers lie prone.
The vandals
Unseen, untouched, unsullied by thought.
Today’s count was ten, bizarre secrets.
The silent fusion of a tree and fence.
The impotence of a violence.
No one talks. No one sees. Not
The residents on its borders,
The visitors bearing tears and obligation,
The workers with caps and machines
The newspapers.
Nothing offered but the quiet that attends this place as closely as the grass.
People walk on with dogs, strollers, friends,
Spinning their most current reports on children and life.
This place just background.
It’s regular features, limited palate of colours, predictable inactivity
A manageable and static history in our backyards.
Strangely pleasant.
Its bizarre secrets need only the concealment
Of silence.
Today’s count was ten.
In this stillness defining open space,
Surprise as alien here as loss designed.
Unseen, untouched, unsullied by thought.
Its bizarre secrets need only the concealment
Of silence.
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