Pebbles of Remembrance

I have not placed a pebble

on my mother’s grave.

She lies far away,

wrapped in a shroud

on a hillside in Israel.

So on Yom Kippur at Yiskor,

as well as at Pesach,

I voice our people’s hope:

Next year in Jerusalem.

I have not placed a pebble

on my father’s grave.

He has none.

His ashes are scattered;

perhaps some float on the winds.

So wherever I lay a pebble

down on the ground,

it may suffice.

Perhaps some of him is here.

Keith Tornheim, September 26, 2012