The meal over except for tea and pie
I hear wind beat the sumac crimson.
In “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport”
Longfellow writes, Gone are the living, but
the dead remain, and I know our forbears
journey with us. Their breath lingers within
the marsh and in that late freight for Detroit.
We stand on the chests of graves to search night’s
autumn constellations for new life, their
century-spanning light absorbed by harbour
and woodland slopes. All is silent except
the great mills flaring their blast furnace gas.
Their flames dance high and, like the living, go.
