Staring at my mother's stone

What will I say

when I stand there finally

looking at my mother's stone

When I was last there, it was

drizzling and gray and I stood

watching her ashes disappear into the hole

my dad and brother dug

There had been no stone yet

the ground barely thawed

the sap barely made into

sweet happiness in the

family sugar house

up on the mountain

the Hog Backs still a muddy mire

too hopeless to drive through

and one granddaughter had stood

quiet, politely watching

and the other shifted nervously

in my womb

What will I say as I plant jonquils

in front of her stone

with one granddaughter (already taller than me)

standing quietly, politely trying to

remember her nanny

and the other mad because

everyone else had gotten to see nanny

except her

(But you are her, I think

with your blond hair and blue eyes and

stubborn, giving, growling nature

You know her better than any of us)

As I wander around the cemetery, I will try to recall the

stories my mother told me

hundreds of stories

hundreds of time

about almost everyone buried beneath these stones

And I will tell funny stories about my mother

and grandfather, and great aunts and great uncles

and of how the sun broke out of the clouds for a moment as

we poured my mother's ashes in the hole

I will think of her voice

as I heard it two days after her passing

saying to me:

"I understand!" 

and as I look

at my daughters playing

in the cemetery, as I did every year

of my childhood

I will say, loudly and with an understanding

that comes only from the passage of time

"I understand too!"