These poems are published connected to a project supported by the DC Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs. Brona Pinnolis was a participant in the 2026 Jewish Poets retreat supported by the grant.

Everyday Yizkor

The rocks of remembrance upon your stone
Heave with the weight of loss of all those who come here for you.
This spot is the anchor,
Wherever you may be.

I study them.
These rocks bring the world to you:

Mexican limestone, Croatian dolomite, Alaskan quartz,

Entrada from Moab,
Rhyolite from Montana,
Pyrite from Colombia,
Granite from my driveway in the foothills of North Carolina,

Common where they laid
Precious where they land.

The places you hoped to see and some you did,
Each telling a story of others living lives

You no longer can,

Bringing both comfort and pain,

Still, lovely that so many carry you with them and
Carry back a piece of themselves to you.

Perhaps you know?

Yahrzeit Blooms

The daffodils and the pear trees bloomed while I was away for just a few days.
I left with a coat to shield myself from the
End-of-winter chill,
And now, just four days later, I have come home to a breeze hinting at the humid warmth so soon to follow.
A first-of-season gnat alighted in my sink,
Flitting away quickly as I turned the faucet sprayer in its direction.
The Carolina wrens are at it again,
Building their nest atop our solar-powered, movement-sensitive outdoor lighting on the corner of the barn,
Despite last season’s blowing away

O spring.
It’s you again.

Amid the bevy of the early spring awakenings, I feel my chest tighten.

Very soon April 1 will come along, anniversary of the date of his recurrence—
No longer a remission from stage 3b, but now, almost inexorably,
Moved to the new square on the cancer chessboard,

Stage 4.

Then onward to early June, his shared birthday with his twin brother—
The birthday,
But also the day we all found out about a large shadow on an x-ray that was a definite

“Something”

Each year a reminder of the trauma of revelation, and of absence,
But also, that his twin continues alone, yet
Another year violently parted from this core part of his identity.

The tick-tocking calendar trudges on…

We soon arrive in July—Independence Day ironically enough—when he knew more treatment was not going to do more for him, and we then began
Eight weeks in the brutal universe
As he held court for all those who came to be with him for their last time

Once for each of them, over and over again for him.

They, feeling and revealing the shock they could not mask from their faces as they sat listening to his weakened voice, but with his beautiful mind and soul still emanating from his ravaged, in extremis, body.

And we sat with him throughout the too-short days and the difficult nights,

And watched him dissipate beyond what was comprehensible but, still, he arose from his bed every day and communed with people who came to sit and be with him,

And then it was the end of August and
He died.

And we sat with him throughout the pre-dawn hours, before calling the nurse to pronounce him and set a time of death and then call for the funeral home to come.

And I told them do not close the bag over his head as he departed the house,
For him—to have the sun on his face one last time.
For us—because having him zipped into a bag was just too unbearable.

And on September 1, we buried him and I can still (always) see him being lowered into the red Memphis soil, and hear my involuntary, out-of-body wailing and feel the heaving of my diaphragm;

And I hear the thumps of that Memphis dirt as it fell onto the polished wood of the casket his dad and I had chosen for him weeks earlier.

And I don’t dwell on those thumps of earth or the sharper, thudding sounds of rocks embedded in that dirt also falling upon him.

I don’t dwell, but
I never forget.

And then there were the various visits and reverberations of both deeply felt and perfunctory condolences and the range between those experiences, for a few weeks beyond that,

And then, like so many other grieving families in the world,
We entered the part that only the family knows:
The rest of our lives with the
Gaping everyday hole in all things.

And now,
Somewhere in the late August-early September timeframe,
The match is struck on our yahrzeit candles.
His name is spoken in front of the community and collectively,
He is remembered.
With intention.

This is our annual and forever season of loss…April through September.

O spring,
Why are you here again?

Brona Pinnolis is a mother of four children, grandmother of one, partner, and dog mom. She is retired from careers in both law and public policy and has long been a writer in these and other segments of her life. Currently, focusing on her creative strengths, she participates in regional art fairs, exhibiting her paintings and photographs of atmospheric landscapes.

After losing one of her children at age 28 to cancer, Brona returned to the written word, and has had poems published in the annual Bards of North Carolina Anthology, Local Gems Publishing, 2024 and 2025 editions. She also participates in local poetry reading venues in her local community in NC. Her debut chapbook, “Writing to the Ground, Poems on Grieving the Death of a Child,” is due to be published in September 2027 by Finishing Line Press.

Featured image Uberprutser, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons