Harder Than Hard Ever Was

The floor was hard.
Never had there ever been anything harder.
She traced a scuff mark
with her finger,
her hand so small -
pudgy-fingered and soft.
There has never been anything ever so soft,
except maybe her heart,
which was tender and young
And had never known pain.
Not really.
She drew her knees up
to her chest,
where her tender heart beat,
and made herself small
As small as small as could  be
and never was she ever so small,
not when her Mama told her
how big she was,
how glorious was her spirit.
Don't hide, Mama said,
so she made herself as big as big could be.
But not now,
now was a time of small
and unknown pain,
and fear as big as the sky.
Now was the time of
a cold hard tile,
an ungiving tile,
scuffed,
empty,
Harder than ever hard was.
Harder than ever was pharoah's heart.
Harder than waiting
for Mama to come.

God of the Desert

We walked in the shadow time,

in the sun's reflected light.

The sun is like God in the desert,

We cannot look upon its face and live,

not while we walk,

not while we flee

not while we search for home.

We are the shadow people.

Mama carries my brother on her back,

I carry water. We both carry life.

Water is like God in the desert,

Hidden and precious

and a trickster illusionist,

a mirage that shimmers.

Still, it makes the desert bloom

I am thirsty, but I do not drink.

My stomach is tight, unfilled,

but I am used to this gnawing hunger.

Food is like God in the desert,

A gift to be gathered,

just enough and no more.

Too much will spoil.

Too much might kill you.

We have learned to live with hunger.

We reached the gates

in the almost light of dawn

Mama lifts my brother down,

and I see her shadowed face -

Careworn lines, desperate worry,

and bruise-smudged eyes of infinite compassion.

She is like God in the desert,

Abandoned. Exiled.

Deserted, with

forgiveness on her tongue.

Forgiveness is a balm in the wilderness.

The gates spark with the rising sun.
Hard iron delicately filigreed.

I imagine our footsteps are
a trail of sand and tears,

leading us home. 

Gates are like God in the desert,

welcoming strangers.

Opening. Closing.

Offering redemption to all who seek it.

I am a stranger everywhere we go.

We walk on cracked earth, 

forward on swollen feet,

to the gate of Heaven

while my mother cries out,

her arms suddenly empty and bare,

but the God of the desert

has already forgotten.

Home on a Distant Shore

My family drifted rather than fled from the stelts of Europe. I think. I'm not exactly sure; none of them really liked to talk about it, so I got a patchwork quilt of family history. Sadly, now most of that generation has died, leaving me with some yellowed pictures that get passed around the cousins with questions – “Who is that, standing next to Irving?” or “Was that Yankl’s anniversary party, or Adel’s?”

I know my zayde on my father's side left his village of some Unpronounceable Name - that was sometimes in Poland, and sometimes in Russia, depending upon which brand of Cossack was more successful at pogroms that day - he left and made the journey to Palestine, where (I'd like to believe) he helped to drain the swamps and make the desert bloom. And then he left, and came to America. But I don't know why. I don't know what drove him to Palestine any more than I know what drove him to the States. All I know is that he and his thirteen brothers and sisters settled in Chicago sometime in the 1920s.

The view from my mother's side of the Diaspora is even murkier. I heard there might have been a false-bottomed cart in which my zayde hid on the way to the harbor of some country-or-other, where he then boarded a ship that took him to Chicago by way of Ellis Island and Nashville and Indianapolis. There's an Uncle who stayed behind, who later became a fighter in the Resistance of the French Underground during the War, and I wish I knew his story - how he got to France, how he became a warrior, how he survived - but he settled in Florida after the war (whenever it was that he made the journey here), and we didn't know him all that well and I was young and didn't know enough to ask him before he died.

There are a couple of other Uncles who never made it to the States, though a post card came not long after the War, making its way through a small tear in the Iron Curtain, so that we knew they had at least survived, but that was about it. That was all we knew, for decades. We found them again - or they found us - about 20 years ago, and we brought them – sponsored them, and their families to come to the States and live here, with us. With family.

They settled, all of them, in each generation of drifting and flight, with their broken and heavily accented English, and their unfamiliarity with American customs, and they got married, had babies who grew and settled and got married and had babies who grew and settled and got married and had babies.

And now, because of all their wandering, there is me, and my beloved son, who is growing, who will settle, who may have babies, or not. He will work and live and play and vote and sometimes not. He will not always agree with the popular opinion, and if now is to give us any indication, he will not agree loudly. He will work tirelessly to prove that hope, and humanity, are stronger than hate. He will stand in indignation when this land - our land, forged in the fires of justice and cooled by the waters of freedom, and our people - all of us once strangers in a strange land - gives in to the fear of The Other, of the Stranger.

My family managed to slip through the gates to get to this place, and I am forever grateful for that. There was a time in our history, not too long ago (as history gets counted), that those very same gates were barred for so many of our people at a time of desperate need. Sadly, most paid the ultimate price and perished in ugly ways. We remember them. And today, oh, today! That gate, that glorious gate of hope and freedom and possibility – I fear that gate is shutting, its rusted iron hinges groaning with the weight of Dreamers denied – those who are here now, and those who still yearn to breathe free, to enter that gate and live their lives.

We cannot let them close! We must not allow that to happen. We cannot allow hate to swallow hope. We cannot stand idly by the blood and tears and hopes of others who, like our ancestors, fled the stetls and oppression and threats of death and poverty, finally landing on these shores, this “goldeneh medinah” where the streets were paved with, if not gold, then at least opportunity.

My son knows this patchwork history of our family, these precious bits and pieces that are all I have of them: how we started so very far from here, and suffered, and were afraid, and packed up and left, because their hope was stronger than their fear. And my son will stand on the shoulders of these beloved unknown giants, and he will make the desert of hatred and fear bloom. He will lift the lamp and open the gates wide, just as they were opened for us: tired, poor, yearning to breathe free, homeless and tempest-tossed.

My son, like his great grandfather before him, will surely make the desert bloom.