By Laura Budofsky Wisniewski
Not that it’s such a fancy graveyard,
just a hill, a mess,
stones leaning on each other
like the fathers of the bride and groom
after the wedding.
Our names are almost gone,
covered by a weeping moss.
I begged my son before I went, just burn me.
Do they listen?
Under all this dirt, tattooed numbers glow
like fireflies.
My Yacob used to say:
They’re never done with us.
And I would think, so dark an eye
in such a handsome man?
Now his headstone’s cracked like an egg.
Desecration?
Let’s face it.
Small animals and even bears
have squatted on our sacred ruins.
That’s not what drags my bones
here, as if fear were a wolf’s tooth.
No, it’s that I let myself believe
the world was getting better.
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski writes and teaches yoga in a small town in Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Minerva Rising, Hunger Mountain, Pilgrimage and other journals. Her grandparents were immigrants fleeing persecution.
Photo credit: Chany Crystal via a Creative Commons license.
Wow. This resonates to the jewess I am and always will be. The best line is Do they listen
You have captured the essence of what trump has unleashed and even tho some of my Jewish friends feel that Jared and wifey will sober up his rhetoric not so. The image of stones leaning on each other is effective.