A Visit To The General Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

She needed some assistance,
walking was a pain they said,
at eighty-six, though Mother had,
since memory began, been strong
and agile on her feet, she had to be.

Well, arm in arm we walked, ahead
of those who were the generation
that followed and was a trifle tardy,
perhaps it was a sort of humour then,
spawned in the days of youth and glee
which always seems to spoil it all,
omnipotently in their stride at that.

The road went straight to him, the General,
he'd rested there since 94,
and always had his way with words
and with the order of the world,
where even flowers on a grave did have their rules.
Well watered and a shade too cold for me,
he did remain as silent as the marble stone,
we placed the sand from distant island shores
into the gaps so he would see it there,
he never made the trip, though not for lack of guts.

It was an eerie day when smoke arose
from the old house next to the silent place,
and drifted near to us as if to bring a small excuse
for random tears or such emotional yahoo.

Son draped his black San Marcos leather jacket
over her, she seemed so frail today,
and when we said our brief and mute goodbyes
it was as if the works of Goethe had been found
on one's small bedside table in the morn,
to be devoured and completely understood.

Some words were scratched into sandstone wall,
and there, amidst the swinish ones I saw it then,
it said Be Pensive and it did not really fit,
but for that day it occupied me, hanging on,
as there he was, inside the ground and this was IT.