It was snowing on the monuments
My dead father’s name next to my living mothers
You went further back into the cemetery
There where so many lies remain lost to winter
There with the named and the nameless
It was snowing on the monuments
All horizons packed with cloud cover
bodies
Some of us left in the vehicles
We came in
Some became some final gesture
Of departure’s sun borne reflect
behind auto glass
heat blowing feeling back into a face
It was snowing on the monuments
Even in the warmth of an engine turning over
You must forget how we came to this place
How we leave
A procession of memory
an immersion in going away
music
Voices of older songs already
In the broken gone
As some wheel turns us back
Onto a gray road
Copyright © 2020 by Gordon Henry. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 26, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
I am weary of the working,
Weary of the long day’s heat;
To thy comfortable bosom,
Wilt thou take me, spirit sweet?
Weary of the long, blind struggle
For a pathway bright and high,—
Weary of the dimly dying
Hopes that never quite all die.
Weary searching a bad cipher
For a good that must be meant;
Discontent with being weary,—
Weary with my discontent.
I am weary of the trusting
Where my trusts but torments prove;
Wilt thou keep faith with me? wilt thou
Be my true and tender love?
I am weary drifting, driving
Like a helmless bark at sea;
Kindly, comfortable spirit,
Wilt thou give thyself to me?
Give thy birds to sing me sonnets?
Give thy winds my cheeks to kiss?
And thy mossy rocks to stand for
The memorials of our bliss?
I in reverence will hold thee,
Never vexed with jealous ills,
Though thy wild and wimpling waters
Wind about a thousand hills.
From The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896) by Alice Cary. This poem is in the public domain.