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© 2011 by Sharon Anderson
December 21, 1968, winter solstice
and just below freezing.
Pristine white snow softened the gravesite,
appropriate weather for the wake of
Michael Rebovich, the personification of
Old Man Winter himself.
A steady wind whipped<Black-shawled mourners as
Grandfather’s casket was lowered into the
broken ground of St. Mary’s Cemetery next to
Grandmother’s seasoned grave of fifteen years.
Winter was synonymous with Grandfather Rebovich,
a cold-blooded reclusive man with antifreeze
in his veins, glacier for a heart.
His hypothermic touch numbed all who
ventured to love him, including Mother and me.
A sharp countenance, strong scent of
disinfectant and arctic glare cooled others.
Jack Frost kept constant vigil, nipping warmth
from a soul never in danger of meltdown.
Even during dog days, he never perspired,
always immaculate in a starched white shirt
buttoned tight at the neck, his Adam’s apple
a bobbing cube above it.
Work was his religion.
Grandfather pursued life like
an act of contrition without absolution,
his own impossible commandments
etched in tablets of ice,
emotions as compressed
as the black coal he once mined.
He was predeceased long before
physical death, before Ellis Island.
Twenty-two years of Croatian poverty
and an indifferent father chilled
his youthful spirit, freezing instinct at survival.
This mantle of wintering
fell from father to son on passing,
like frost on a dead cat. It ended with Michael
Rebovich.
Departing St. Mary’s Cemetery,
I left Grandfather and my unrequited love
to winter’s final exoneration
and the coming spring thaw.
Sharon Anderson is a member of the Greensburg Writers Group and the Ligonier Valley Writers. She also enjoys crocheting and knitting. She has been published in many literary journals, including Lucidity, Black Moon, Bear Creek Haiku,
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