(dedicated to my late husband, a Holocaust Survivor)
What would you have done
To grasp with stiff fingers
This coffee cup warmth.
What would you have done
To ease your blue frozen toes
With these thermal socks
What would you have done
To be lured by the comforting waves
Of this blazing fire
Or for these windows
This roof
This piece of bread.
(Written on International Women’s’ Day, March 2013 on Block Island, R.I.)
I can pretend
The distant upright boulder
Stark on the breakwater’s tip
Is a woman.
Waves pound her
Ocean water flooding her eyes
Mingle with her tears
But she will never succumb.
As with the tides
She takes it
Takes it, takes it
Again and again.
She faces east
Where the sun rises before her
In adoration.