I have placed stones upon graves
never on someone I knew
strangers receiving little round blessings
from childish fingertips

in the Jewish religion
we give pebbles to the dead
hard lumps of ancient earth
put to rest upon slabs
silence for silence
this is how we say good-bye
something I have never said

when I was three
there was a graveyard
near my grandfather's house
my sisters and I
heaped pebbles onto slabs of rock
we knew them only
by the names and numbers
on their graves.

to us, it was a game.

years later I stand in another graveyard
on the beach of another continent
stained invisible red by long-dead soldiers
who fought for strangers
while enemy machine guns
mocked thunder on the shore
until the living had to wade
through bodies stacked waist-high

I look out at this beach
now pearly white
respect keeps sunbathers away
from the endless graveyard
neat marble crosses
stand in silent rows

on the lone white Jewish star
of Meyer Revits, 1944,
I place a pebble.
I do not know him either.