So this is how it ends
A dozen folks gathered round your gravesite
Watching as your body descends to the ground
Wrapped in a shroud, placed in a box
Meeting the cold, hard earth
Your final sleeping spot
Far from the Brooklyn basement you died in
Soon to be slept in by another

So this is how we say goodbye
We, your friends, companions through life
Dispatchers in death
We shovel earth on your unknowing personage
Freeze in the revivifying air that doesn't move you
Shudder to see the tractor closing the gaping chasm
And in a few brief moments, close you off forever

Now where is your humor, your zest in the funny?
Your questions, curiosity, insights you'd find?
Where is your caring, your sharing, your warmth?
Gone to warm the ground, gone to feed the worms

Your soul is I know not; what comes next, uncertain
Some, they believe, and their minds are at ease
To think of you voided; cancelled; erase-d
This is a pain that is too great to bear

Friend, you're departed
Sudden, you've left us
Opened a wound; made us bereft
Some call it passing
More evolution
Yet to us mortals it feels like a theft



December 11th, 2018
Dedicated to the memory of our friend, Shlomo Zalman Slowik, who died in his apartment November 23rd, 2018


Photo Credit:
Solomon Slowik