Catching Up

I finished reading an essay a few weeks ago called poetry by concession. It was from a book which I just got from Amazon yesterday titled: The selected writings of Juan Ramon Jimenez. This essay touched a lot of things that I feel in my craft of poetry. I put a quote of his on my e-mail. Here is a quote of his: one is a poet not because one writes poetry, but because one is "an abstract dancer," someone whose "eyes are not turned outward but within oneself." The poem below was written in Minnesota after visiting my grandparents. It is the first time seeing that site. Hinkely, Minnesota.

The Grandparents Grave

For Linda & Kim

The gate was a pull
A hedge made it so.
Walking the precipice
Of this life; committed
To finding their grave.

Red marble- square among green
And so serene.
Footsteps among the supine.
Relatives don’t sit in cloister
Like the “Our Town” line
Preaching among the dead.

We voice the history
Ineffable as it may be
Like voicing an abandoned organ-
Pipes bent and rusted, yellow keyed
Stops left open.

In death there is no punch
Of bare-knuckled fighters
Or swigging rock gut.

The story, the Irish line
That is what outlives all.