To a Friend at Rilke's Grave in Raron (Switzerland) by Lois P. Jones

Original images and simple iphone footage by Lois P. Jones taken in Raron, Switzerland in October 2017. Link to original poem. www.terrain.or...
Published at Terrain in 2018.
Republished in the Altadena Poetry Anthology 2020 with much thanks to editors Teresa Mae Chuc and Hazel Clayton.
To a Friend at Rilke’s Grave in Raron
Alles ist eins. ~ Rilke
for Lia
The black-faced sheep
are bleating, their bells
a soft song-a clinking of spoons
in tin cups-a call to presence
when the world draws them
into its map of the living.
The pines trees know how the dark hum
of a new season enters the lungs
like a promise. And if it is a promise
how can it be sustained?
I stand in bare feet near my rucksack
and the grey slate path
to his grave. The mountains offer distance,
the snow a memory of a life
I barely recall. Just the blue repeating
of the Alps and from somewhere a chant-
three words that fall from the air
as my shadow touches his grave.
And as I whisper them over and over
I cannot say he isn’t present.
I cannot say the dead don’t move toward
what calls them. Only how the valley stretches
its worn jacket on the grass
and begs me to stay. How my heart
is a spinnaker in the wind
catching the breath of it. I linger as long
as I can-until the shadow of his cross
escapes into darkness. I make my way back
through the mosaic of gravestones
and the plots of bright flowers planted
near each grave. Cross the corner
where the aspen trembles
and then I see you just as you are-awoken
from the place of dreams and I cannot tell where
the soft green slope of the hill ends
and your hip begins. I want to say
don’t forget her, she’s still on the hill,
her body shaded from October sun-
her face in profile, arms resting on knees
as she looks into the deepening vale.
Aren’t parts of us buried in the lands we meet?
Our souls broken into bones
sure as flint. There are foxes like wood smoke
in the body. They move quietly in the forest.
They know one of their own. They will find you.
They will dig you up.