My Grandmothers Came from the

My Grandmothers Came from the Ukraine.

My grandmothers came from the Ukraine.
Each one
Pushed, pushed
By swelling Cossack waves,
Night pogroms, burning homes and hoof-print graveyards.
Scattered, scattered.
One to Austria, the other, Argentina, Boston.

My grandmother in Austria met my grandfather
And became my father’s parents,
Pushed, pushed
By the waves of Hitler’s Reich
In the Holy war against the Jews, Gypsies, Whathaveyou.
Galicia, Poland, England, New York (Israel, Florida).
Scattered, scattered.

My Grandfather removed himself from Portugal
At the Catholics’ strong suggestion
And ended up in Holland, England, Argentina
Boston.

And I am Boston, New Jersey, South Carolina,
New Mexico, North Carolina, Minneapolis, Seattle and Canada.
Israel, England, Germany, Philadelphia, Florida.
And in no place do I belong,
Each place I needed to move from,
Pushed, pushed
Economics, education,
Culture bade me leave,

Browning pastures left for green and I
Unhappy in the next as the last
Moved on again, unattached
Unrooted, uncommitted and still,
In the back of my mind I’m planning where next,
Wherever I am inferior to where I might be.
I’m sure it will be better.
Scattered, Scattered.

Yom HaShoah.
Day of Remembrance.
It should be enough to remember,
But it blows through my hollow bones
Like a winter bird in flight,
I scatter like a dried dandelion.
A personal Diaspora,
I shatter like crystal, dispersing light.