The
Ceremony Remains
(For
Erna Rosenfeld)
by Hiromi Yoshida
by Hiromi Yoshida
Bike-rush
down the wrong South Adams Street dead-
end
to dead-end—grey October air heavy with mourning
and
rainstorm threat. “Is it
rude
to appear late for an occasion
such
as this?” I wondered as though each
moment
(I was not
there)
were yet another blow
striking
one final
nail
into her
casket.
Urgency and denial coexisted
so
impossibly—propelling me in all the wrong directions
as
though my heart were a broken
compass
unable to gauge the simplest
way
to the site of serene abjection (i.e. the Beth
Shalom
Gardens). Discarded funeral
program
pamphlets folded slightly
askew
with the damp of sad fingers;
water
for ritual handwash running
sparkles;
bowl of unknown Jewish ceremony
implements
folded carefully in dark
blue
linen; and the colossal casket in the designated oblong hallowed
groundspace--clods of soil ritualistically scattered across its
hidden surface, the ceremony remains
in
the gradual sunlight seeping through the sky’s opening cracks
above
those who linger at Valhalla.
Bio:
Hiromi
Yoshida has been described as one of Bloomington’s “finest and
most outspoken poets” by Tony Brewer, Chair of the Writers Guild at
Bloomington, Indiana. Her poems have been published in The Asian
American Literary Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Evergreen Review,
and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society.