My parents lived in Lodz, Poland when the Nazis marched in during the month of September in 1939. The Nazis quickly blocked off a section in Lodz and put all of the Jewish population in the fenced off area where they were packed in. They were in the ghetto struggling with survival issues for years and both of them were rounded up and spent at least a year in several concentration camps. My mother was eighteen years old, a recent high school graduate with dreams of becoming a journalist. She was the fourth youngest of five children. Her two sisters, an older brother and her mother and father did not survive. She lost aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and a finance. My father was the youngest of three sons, he was thirty three years old when the Nazis came into Poland. He was married with two young daughters and he worked in the family bakery business. My parents only knew each other casually in the ghetto, they met up after they were liberated and joined their two broken lives together. My sister and I never heard their whole stories at once. We were junior detectives piecing together our parents’ history, one segment at a time. To Life
I am a miracle child My life is a gift born of parents meant for death
out of ruin, hatred, lies death and poison came Max and Sophie broken lives joining
Two children Chana and Frieda affirmations of life yes to miracles yes to love yes to re-birth
Who can say what strangers do out of their twisted emptiness
I have been inspired over the years to write poems about them and their experiences. This book is dedicated to them, I did not want their voices and life experiences to get lost. Sometimes their stories and pain did not even need words, my sister could feel the mystery and longing so without spoken communication we had an agreement that we were not going to cause our parents further grief.
The Bones of My Ancestors The bones of my ancestors lie in ground I cannot visit
The bones of my ancestors lie in unhallowed land not blessed but cursed By a war so terrible it was called a World War
The bones of my ancestors were put there as the world turned away these bones are covered layer after layer so broken they could not be reclaimed
I cannot visit I cannot pray over these bones They are gone lost to me forever
It is not a hard stretch of the imagination to see how I became a therapist. I understood at an early age, the comfort of just being together, doing simple jobs and tasks. I was a secret watcher and listener, I looked for clues by looking at people and being still .
The Circle of Life The circle of life teaches us that everyday a baby is born and every day a person dies whether it be from old age or at the hands of another
Everyday the circle of life teaches us that the sun will rise in the eastern sky and set in the west and in between people eat go to work make love got to sleep
The circle of life teaches us that the barrels of black rifles burn the flesh of men’s hands and destroy their sense of belonging they drop their rifles and move forward to unknown places where they do the same thing over and over and over again their price for being tricked in going to war
The circle of life teaches us and we don’t listen.
Being a poet in the world I have learned to write and re-write the words that fill my mind and heart
I try to draw from how I experience the world
I invite in the different senses so when I write about an autumn morning or a red apple it makes it easier to smell the air or see the falling leaves
I remind myself why I want to be a poet it humanizes me connects me to my world family and friends and to the people who populate it
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