Waiting to Search Holocaust Records of my Parents’ Enslavement

in response to in the distance by Wendy Weaver

A glass wall frames nature —

denuded trees climbing the hillside,

the clawed clinging to earth.

Pared to fiber their stories speak

from gnarled limbs, snapped branches,

scars tattooed in bark.

Naked in their grayness.

I sit at the window, ponder

the portents, shadow-reminders,

the depth and direction

of these thick roots.

Sadness roils; the ashes

clamp my throat.

In the distance a narrow

road beckons —

Survivors, they vanquished

starvation, the brutal indignities

of relentlessness,

found scraps of potato peel,

black bread crust,

the hymn their mothers sang.

They grabbed life’s palette,

clothed their exposed flesh

with hues of hope’s compassion.