WATERSKIING
Skimming the water,
grasping the line tightly,
a waif in the wind, dismayed
by the boat's speed. I am at the
whim of a reckless captain.
It should be me at the wheel.
I should be in control.
Enduring every crashing wave,
trying to maintain my balance.
I don't remember the beginning,
or know when the ride will end.
I hold on to this fragile line,
hoping to be towed forever,
for this is all I have ever known.
THE GATE
We stood outside the familiar, ornate iron gate reading the lie, twenty-five empathetic souls. The words were in German; they said work would make us free. It was the same Nazi lie that had been read by frightened innocents more than fifty years before us as they were led into this camp under arrest and about to be imprisoned. We came to witness the horror.
In the first building we examined photographs of emaciated human bodies thrown, while still alive, into mass graves to die. Their clothing and belongings had been dumped in careless piles and kept, children's toys, shoes, and human hair cut and shaved, saved, grotesquely entwined around a scratched attaché case. That black purse—identical to one I had at home.
Out in the air again, dank and smoky still, a trick of the mind? We marched through rows of crude, log buildings. Inside were narrow bunk beds in which the prisoners slept, crowded together in layers, shoving each other, fighting for air. At night some smothered. The sleep buildings were constantly observed by guards from towers in the yard. We climbed one and pretended we were guards on diligent watch.
Our next stop—the gas chamber. First a room where canisters of cyanide still remained, stored behind wire and label as if ready for use. In the chamber itself, we felt naked. Some of us were crying with shame. There was a small metal pipe in the middle of the ceiling. Were those their screams we heard and the hiss of cyanide seeping into the room?
Dead bodies had once been removed assembly-line style as we were moving to the crematorium, a round, stone building, blackened by ash, darker at the top, where chimney stacks had steadily puffed smoke out into the clouds. Inside the crematorium were rows of brick ovens, doors left open to facilitate our view of their depth. We could imagine what was once shoved inside.
At the end of our mission we stood in a corridor together, bonded by the shared experience, yet oddly, alone. We were twenty-two Jews and three Christians, at once brothers and sisters. Each of us was given a memorial candle. We lit our candles, whispered our prayers, and hugged each other silently.
We left. We would always remember those who, once having passed through the iron gate, would never again experience physical freedom regardless of how hard they had worked.
LOSS OF A CHILD
I don't know how long it went on.
Whenever we met people on the street,
my mother would tell them of her grief.
He was all she had, her baby boy.
She'd stop people she met on the street.
They were uncomfortable and wanted to leave.
She lost all she had, her baby boy.
What was she going to do now?
It made them uncomfortable and want to leave.
What could they possibly say?
She didn't know what to do now.
Was I wrong to be embarrassed?
They never knew what to say,
or how to help or comfort her.
I stood at her side embarrassed
and feeling so insignificant.
Nothing could help or comfort her.
She needed to tell of her grief.
It didn't matter that I felt insignificant.
I don't know how long it went on.
JANE DOE
Ah! Jane Doe, an anonymous name on a page, #6-7-0-4.
He stood, holding a heavy ledger, outside her door.
A breathing tube was attached to her knot of a nose.
A light hospital gown and flannel sheet were her clothes.
Her grimaced face was withered and drawn.
He glanced down, not believing the year she was born.
1996, that meant she was only a mere twenty-five,
but he had arrived, so she wouldn't, she couldn't survive.
She had been picked up by police and delivered from the streets,
stinking and bedraggled, unworthy of emergency calls or tweets.
Slowly and silently, he approached her hospital bed,
and removed the plastic tube. Soon she would be dead.
Another soul to gather for his harvest, though a bit unripe,
but having been sent, he was convinced it was honest and right.
Then, to his shock, she awoke from her deep, somber sleep,
and stared at him so sternly that her gaze caused him to weep.
Never before had Death been quite so embarrassed.
When word of this got around he would surely be harassed.
Unsteady as a wretched old flivver, he feebly took flight,
leaving Jane to rest so that she might live to see the new light.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip(s):
Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
―William Faulkner
* * *
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
―Stephen King
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Linda Klein for her fine poems this morning!
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