Remembering Our Heroes...

Memorial Day

BY MICHAEL ANANIA

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway   

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,   

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored   

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down   

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair   

brushed back, and the single water faucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy   

regarding the precise enactments of their own   

gesturing. And among the women there will be   

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed   

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,   

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,   

bluebells and zebra grass toward that place

between the willow and the water faucet, the way   

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

Michael Anania, “Memorial Day” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Michael Anania

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