Mia Schilling Grogan
Aninut at Champlain Towers South
In Jewish tradition, the period between a person's death and burial is known as Aninut. Working closely with local rabbis, the police and medical examiners, the Jewish burial society ensured that every body discovered in the rubble was handled according to Orthodox standards, at least until a determination could be made about whether the person was Jewish. "We figured there was no stricter law than ours," said the holy society's director. "We do it because we care about Jewish ritual law, but we care about everybody." NYTimes Aug. 10, 2021
Prayer, unceasing, from June twenty-third
to July twenty-sixth: the Psalms, night
and day, on site or remotely, praise and lament
cradling layered, broken bodies in the words
of ancient grief until with kind observance—
washed and wrapped in linen—what's left returns
to earth. Every body, those who were born
to Jewish custom, those baptized, the servants
of God under any name or none at all,
all accompanied and dressed with the same
tender care that the most stringent practice
might demand, these habits of death a model
for our living: abundance of solace,
bread and love, until everyone gets home.
Singing Without You I
For Isobel, 2017
I'm a better singer
when standing beside you.
Sunday after Sunday,
your clear Soprano 2
pulled my octave-hopping
Alto to levels we
both knew surpassed my skill.
Now that you're away
I feel my loss of range.
At school you'll be busy
expanding your own. Here,
I'll trail your sister's dizzy
Soprano 1 whose soaring
evinces how the Mezzo
is missed. Our singing needs
your song; my voice, its marrow.
Singing Without You II
For Catharine, 2022
And now I’m more unchorused.
I never could imp on your true Soprano
but it floated from the end of the pew
and its loss is worse than sorrow;
it is loss of self, too. Who am I,
standing with your father in this nave
Sunday after Sunday where my daughters
and our Tenor, too, feel the love
we proclaim is insufficiently lived?
We sing the song of your hearts:
All are welcome in this place—
the hymn we’ve sung together in our parts
for years, and we will try to sing it true:
one droning Bass and this shaken
Alto, lacking you. But another hymn
worms in: Will the circle be unbroken?
|
|
 |
|
|
