sounds at a funeral

it is sprinkling when we arrive, they

tell us to walk to the left of the hearse,

the mud is squishy, mounds of it

everywhere, i have passed this place

every time i have driven this road,

probably hundreds, never before had

i entered, the silence here is not silent—

whispers, scraping canes and and rain,

all manner of steps—heels, boots, soft

shoes with a wide toebox, nothing

rhythmic, more syncopated cacophony

to the singing of the rabbi, her voice, can

i say? angelic. then a thud, a brown

shellacked vault and i smell шкатулки 

but maybe it’s because the gravestone to

my left reads, Любимая бабуля with a photo

of a woman still young, maybe late-thirties,

then pulleys and ropes and screws and why

is this taking this long an elderly aunt

shouts and we don’t know whether to laugh

or cry so we do both but she’s right, i don’t

remember it taking this long—last time or

the time before, but this uncle, his dying

was slow and now the laying to rest

laborious, three men wipe their brows as we

watch, then the rabbi explains three shovels

of dirt, it is a chesed shel emet, a true selfless act

of kindness, our tucking our loved one

in for the last time, and three she says for

the three levels of the soul—nefesh, ruach ,neshamah,

vital, spirit and soul, and so we shuffle in

two lines, take turns, throwing a rose then

the three shovels of earth so heavy, so final,

so many tears and red faces then prayers we

all know by heart and then we walk, a procession

down a walkway lined with more tears and more

rain, we hear our own footsteps and our own

tears and whispers from both sides,

Ha’makom yenahem etkhem betokh

she’ar avelei Tziyon v’Yerushalayim,

May G-d console you among the mourners

of Zion and Jerusalem.