The poem alone is very moving. I do this at the places my loved ones died, if I have access to them (OK there's only one, and it's in my house). Adding the story about the man and how he taught you to listen, makes it even more powerful. I love your poetry! No frills to decode, no fancy language complicating a touching moment in time. Really solid stuff! You make it look so easy, but I know it's not. I'm glad you found this one.
There were a few others with this one that I’ll share eventually. They were a strange glimpse into my past, written in different decade, in a different country, from a different perspective, with different hopes and desires.
Of course, I remember writing them, but in a lot of ways, finding them again was more like coming across a book of poems in a library and enjoying what was written than finding something that I had written myself.
My wife and children don’t know that I write poetry. And I haven’t talked about it with them because 1. until recently, it was only something that I did in a past life, and 2. translating the poems into the language we speak together is beyond my ability.
My father-in-law is even an aspiring haiku poet. I enjoy listening to him talk about poetry and even trying to understand the haiku that he has written, but I don’t talk about mine.
Funny, isn’t it