Bavarian Sun

((1970, Augsburg, Germany)(Barbarian Potato Fields))



It was warm, but with a chill coming down into the Barbarian gorge, early in the morning, my bones lightly shivered. The sun had melted the last of the light patches of snow on the ground, as we drove along the potato fields. It was spring in the gorge but he sun was extremely warm. We came along the roadside, women were planting in the fields, and their backs were bent carrying seeds in their aprons. As we passed the cemetery a burial had just started. Chris (the German-Jewish young lady I had been dating), said, “My grandmother is buried here, I want to see her, I will be also be buried here, beside her right here in the cemetery (she had leukemia).”
We got out of the car and walked through those thick Jewish-German cast-iron gates. I said, “Grüss Gott,” to a few folks walking as we walked past them coming up to the gravestone, of Chris’ grandmother.
“Its funny people never speak to you in graveyards I guess,” I said to Chris.
“Their not here for that,” she said.
We stopped by her grandmother’s gravestone, and she spoke something in German, I watched two custodians digging a hole, as if it was to be filled up later on, with the same old earth. They had barbarian hats, and high leather boots, and I stared at the grave to be, and then at Chris. And then the two men stopped shoveling, and they straightened up their backs, took a drink out of a quart bottle of beer that rested besides them: then went on digging into the earth and spreading the earth evenly around the grave hole, as if to be easily re-filled later on. Somehow, in this bright spring morning the grave-digging, and the praying over the gravestone—at the ripe old age of twenty-two, seemed dreamlike to me, if not unreal.
“What a day to die and be buried on,” I said.
“I want to be buried right here, right with my grandmother, she spent a lot of time raising me,” said Chris.
“Well,” I said, “did we really have to come here?” She didn’t respond, she was into other things.
The only shadows were made by headstones, or by the people standing by them, and in the sun the sweat melted into my underclothing. It was pleasant to be warmed by the sun, although you could not rest in it. It was getting late in the morning, and I was getting hungry. We hadn’t stayed too long, but perhaps too long in the valley. I was glad the day wasn’t over, I wanted to do other things, but it was a lovely morning in gorge.
We drove out of the gorge, past many an old style Bavarian inn and guesthouse, and just houses in particular. And I guess it was good to be down in the gorge. It was spring, and I felt by the chill in the air, there might be some frost in the evening, but tomorrow in the early morning the sun again would melt it, for the winter winds and the snow had been spoiled by the sun, once and for all for this year. We were both tired of the chilled air, to include the sun. You could not completely get away from it though.
We saw a guesthouse, the innkeeper sat in his chair outside in the sun, a table on the sidewalk, and beside him his wife stood enjoying the fresh air. And we stopped the car, and we walked up to the inn, and I said “Grüss Gott,” and they returned the greeting, and we sat in the guesthouse and had lunch, we had our share of the morning sun.


No: 510 ((11-1-2009) (written on the day of life)) Dedicated to Chris S.