SingingFrogPress

My Ancestors

      Note to readers: I was startled this morning when I came on this poem among many piled on my desk.  I wrote it while contemplating the probable history of my Jewish ancestors who arrived in the USA in the early 20th Century from Belarus, Poland and Romania, and now I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, the ongoing war in Ukraine, which began just over a year ago. I pray for peace.

Sitting on a box
an old woman
holds the hot
glass with calloused
fingers, sucks tea
around the sugar
cube clenched
between her teeth.

All the houses
of her village
are burning.
Her children
are scattered.
Her old man sits
on the ground
beside her

hands empty, one upturned
in his lap, the other
resting on her knee.
He stares at the sky
and weeps.

She sucks
and sucks
the bitter tears
around the sweet
dissolve.
          12/16/2004

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