December 2016
Richard Nester
ranester@uci.edu
ranester@uci.edu
I hail from Floyd, VA, a rural town off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Southwestern Virginia, a place to which I return on a regular basis to care for my elderly parents. Most of the time though, now that I have retired from my job as instructor in a writing center at UC Irvine, I write and play the harmonica in Southern California. I am the author of two collections, Buffalo Laughter (Alabaster Leaves, 2014) and Gunpowder Summers (Alabaster Leaves, 2016), and have published poetry and essays in many journals and anthologies.
Tending
at Jacksonville Burial Ground
There are acts more personal than this,
this tending of the foot stones of my kin,
intimacies too numerous to list—
in sickness and in health, those kinds of duties.
With sore knees and the sun on my back,
I wonder how far I’ll get before I stop.
Not at “Sonny” certainly:
Alvin Bishop Phillips (1930-1948).
Killed in a railroad accident. The biggest hurt
she ever had, my aunt, the one that made
all others small. I wouldn’t say she dwelt on it;
rather it dwelt in her, talking its way
to the surface whenever things were still.
A butcher knife’s the only tool I need,
an old one, thin from years of grinding,
with a little rust on the blade and a handle
wrapped in tape, a kitchen tool put to other use.
With it I cut a border around each stone,
to free it from the over-growing grass.
Her eyes are on me now, back down the row.
Just one kind favor I’ll ask of you . . .
see that Sonny’s grave is kept clean.
And then I do one more in another row,
a name I don’t recognize, not my kin at all,
with whom I share nothing, save the vast
proximity of death, which, while I’m tending it,
feels much like life—same sore knees, same sun.
appeared first in Floyd County Moonshine
at Jacksonville Burial Ground
There are acts more personal than this,
this tending of the foot stones of my kin,
intimacies too numerous to list—
in sickness and in health, those kinds of duties.
With sore knees and the sun on my back,
I wonder how far I’ll get before I stop.
Not at “Sonny” certainly:
Alvin Bishop Phillips (1930-1948).
Killed in a railroad accident. The biggest hurt
she ever had, my aunt, the one that made
all others small. I wouldn’t say she dwelt on it;
rather it dwelt in her, talking its way
to the surface whenever things were still.
A butcher knife’s the only tool I need,
an old one, thin from years of grinding,
with a little rust on the blade and a handle
wrapped in tape, a kitchen tool put to other use.
With it I cut a border around each stone,
to free it from the over-growing grass.
Her eyes are on me now, back down the row.
Just one kind favor I’ll ask of you . . .
see that Sonny’s grave is kept clean.
And then I do one more in another row,
a name I don’t recognize, not my kin at all,
with whom I share nothing, save the vast
proximity of death, which, while I’m tending it,
feels much like life—same sore knees, same sun.
appeared first in Floyd County Moonshine
©2016 Richard Nester
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