Rachel Barenblat lives and writes in Williamstown, MA. Her first volume of poetry, the skies here, was published by Pecan Grove Press (San Antonio) in 1995. Her poems have recently appeared in The Berkshire Review, Portfolio, and others. When she is not writing she is usually baking bread, brewing beer, or singing madrigals.
It is 1939.
There is a child
with light brown curls and demanding eyes,
Shirley
Temple without her tap shoes.
The young
father paces on deck. His sister
and her husband jumped ship when their
boat
was turned back: by now, perhaps,
they have made
their way to Brazil.
The young father is still pacing. The nervous energy
that propelled him through Russian high school,
chopped his
medical school name to Eppie,
exploded forth in his first daughter, now
three,
with her sailor cap, makes the President Harding
too small: the
daily lifeboat drills,
impatient fingers fastening the wave of orange
around his wife's neck. He bets
on horses,
wins fifty dollars. His fingers
trace his diploma, creased in a pocket.
Fifty-seven
years later four old men in Masonic aprons
will gather
before his family
to place a leafy twig, "symbol of everlasting life,"
on their Brother's wooden casket. His only son,
born in
America long after the boat crossing,
stands, says "Daddy would have
loved this: all
of these people here, talking about him -- "
It is 1939 and
his quiet wife comes out
to the deck with their dark-eyed child. He holds
her on his knee, singing in Czech, notices
her small
fingers. Thinks, "No matter
when God takes me, she will be when I am
gone."
He laughs, reflected in her stubborn eyes.
