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To Enid on Her Birthday
by Donald Lev

Wordless again,
caught in an internal net.
How you used to get upset
when you’d say “say something” and I
couldn’t open my mouth. I still can’t explain it.
today would have been your sixtysecond birthday.
Barbara and I met in Brighton and drove out to the cemetery.
Barbara had planned to bring roses but forgot to buy any.
I told her it wasn’t a Jewish thing to do anyway, not that
it had to be, but for some reason Jews used stones, not flowers.
I thought of your poem, “ Stone Shekhina”
and was stunned by the light
shone on this very mystery.
I brought along a little seashell and piece of coral
from where you had placed them on the bookshelf in New Jersey.
They broke in my pocket but I left the pieces anyway.
There already were many stones atop your little monument.
Could they have been left undisturbed
from the unveiling nine months ago?
That would be amazing. Or that so many had come to visit you
those months would also be wonderful and amazing.
I left stones on my parents’ graves too.

6/28/05

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