Today we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2021 finalist Anya Geist! Anya finished 9th grade this past school year. Her poem is called “His Resting Place” and is a tribute to her great-great-grandfather. Enjoy!
His Resting Place
by Anya Geist
It was a clear, sunny day in September
A day where it was still warm out
But the aroma of autumn trickled into the air,
Where the trees were still leafy and green
But their tops were turning vibrant oranges and reds;
It was that day that we went
We drove the narrow, bumpy roads until we found it
A gentle, sloping field populated by graves
And surrounded by tall, proud trees;
The air was fresh, silent, and still
As we stepped out of the car
We wandered through the cemetery before us
Letting the short but unkempt grass brush our shoes.
Rows of orderly tombstones stretched out into the distance
Creating lanes and paths that wove a pattern into the land
We read the neatly engraved names
And soaked in the foreign yet comforting lines of formal Hebrew.
Our eyes rested on the carefully carved Maginei David
Which adorned each and every stone
Some of the gravestones read death dates
Of over a hundred years ago.
They were small and worn:
Moss crept peacefully over their faces
And their edges were softened by time
We passed sections of closely packed graves
Where some of the names were faded
And the stone markers mere feet apart,
Forming kehillot for the souls after death
Each grave here was a life, I thought,
Hearing a train rattle peaceably in the distance.
A soft wind rustled the leaves of the trees all around.
Each grave was a person.
And then, at the top of the hill, we saw it
His stone
The grave of Max Handel
My great-great-grandfather
A man who died exactly fifty years and one week before I was born
A man who emigrated from Russia in 1908,
Who settled in an unknown city
With narrow roads and steep hills,
And who is buried only ten minutes from my home
We placed two rocks atop his grave in remembrance;
Then we stepped back in silence
And breathed in the clear, almost-fall air
At his resting place
Translations:
Maginei David (מגני דוד): Stars of David
kehillot (קהילות): communities
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