Bethlehem
By Lee Passarella

Jog-sweat streaking down her back,

under the hot sling of the halter top,

she pauses where she never has before,

at the black canopy of pine and oak that shields

Bethlehem Cemetery, Established 1845,

from her century.

                             The morning air heavy

as the overnight news, the only sound

the tinny critch-critch of a drum set riffing

through the earbuds she’s looped across

her shoulder. Until she cuts her iPod off,

floats free of its slim white tether, the bark

she sails in swinging under the black canopy

and out, into the narrow channel

of this dusty Styx.

                             Tottering slabs, broken slabs

of limestone. Of slate. And granite. The uniform

ones, the ones at careful intervals, mark families,

some as nameless as the prehistoric dead,

two names prominent after all those many years.

And she thinks, even in the graveyard folks still try

to make a name for themselves. Here, bounded in marble,

are the Cunninghams, there the Jacksons,

1892 a hard year for the Cunninghams.

 

Four plain stones mark four children gone,

two in that awful year alone. In the Jackson plot,

a single marker for a double loss: Twin Daughters

Born and Died June 13.

                                  From her silent bark,

she watches the silent Cunninghams and Jacksons,

corseted, frock-coated, black-draped to the ankles.

They stand where mother and father sleep

their sleep, Gone but not forgotten. At rest with Jesus

now, and listen to the hopeful words, to the hollow

drumming of tossed earth, as earth meets earth. . . .

 

She floats back under the canopy, past

the dissolving headstones, the anemic Our Lord’s

candles, the ice-white destroying angels

feasting on the hewn logs that circle Bethlehem

like ancient city limit signs. Back into the hot sun

and smog, where clocks still tick off

the century. She feels her runner’s heart

finally wound down to this dull,

this miraculous quotidian pace.

Feels the descent of the tiny replication

of herself that has been waiting for its time

since before all worlds.