Though I’ve never uttered the name pharaoh
I knew he was there

ordering and stacking our life in some way.
It bothered me little as I attended to my duties,

fed my children, intoned my hopes to the Most High
striving for an alabaster heart.

But something nagged at me
as I swept the corners of his future,

knelt and watched the adornment build itself
into an umbrella of everlasting.

Like a crescent boat
forever pulled from the shore

in the shadowed gleam
of the long long water.

I revelled in the brightness of the pigments
and curve of the steady hand.

The careful placement of words that make histories
meant to carry us beyond the hold of our days.

What is it to keep these traditions
to show ourselves to the gathering of witnesses.

What if I wish for the tomb door closed
sequestered inside it with nothing

to lay my body still in that dusty silence,
to say never shall these gates be opened,

to take with me all that I was and became,
to share it with no one who is left on the other side of that stone wall?

There are and have been
sorrows greater than mine

and joys, I imagine, too.
Though who knows the inner heart

beyond the song that the mouth sings?
In the small call of the bird

my peace is made like a braided mat
still like a palm filled with sand

to be left in the quiet
in the cool stone days.

This is drawn from “Holdings.”