ARCTURUS
in Lynnhurst Cemetery, Knoxville, Tennessee
Your grave, 11 year old Marla, with the icon
of your teddy bear – Tubby – your shawabti,
bear-guard, Arcturus. Around you stones for your parents,
your brother and sister, birth dates, Stonehenge,
moon trackers buried alive in Aubrey holes.
And that icon, that bear-guard
may be all you get, may bear’s self be
that true judge, that figure in the round window,
for you, Marla, in your last pajamas,
padding around the Pole with the great she-bear.
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Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: January 7th, 2021 14:04
- Comment from author about the poem: I found this gravestone in an old cemetery in Knoxville in 1991 and wrote this poem. A shawabti (or ushebti) is an ancient Egyptian funerary effigy placed in a burial. The red giant star Arcturus, literally the bear-guard, lies a good way beyond the curve of the handle of the Big Dipper, the tail of the Great Bear. The Aubrey holes at Stonehenge are vertical pits surrounding the monument, some containing the skeletal remains of sacrificial victims. The Great Bear leads the ancient circumpolar bear cult, to which all our teddy bears belong. The true judge (dayan ha-emet) is a Hebrew appellation for God, while the figure in the round window is the image of Christ often seen in the round window above the west entrance to an oriented church building.
- Category: Children
- Views: 21
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