Finding Home: Other Voices

For a change of pace, I'm pleased to share the work of author and poet, Esther Altshul Helfgott today.

Spouse as Home

I didn't know he
was my shul
my language
my mother tongue
and prayer
the zeyde I lost,
and bubbes
I never had.
Or that he was my homeland.
And exile.
My nakedness.

I didn’t know
when I met him
twenty-five years ago
that I had needed
a place to
dwell
in.
Or that knowing
turned less
into more
And more
into
less.

Oh,

where shall
I

dwell
when he’s
gone

Where

shall

I
when
he’s

From Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems (Yakima, WA: Cave Moon Press, 2013; e-version: Two Sylvias Press, 2013)

Also appears in   Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease. Holly Hughes, ed.  (Kent State University Press) 2009; forthcoming in West Coast Women's Jewish Poetry Anthology

***

I Sat Upon His Grave

I watched the letters of his name
upon the stone.

I cried until they came alive—
the letters of his name.

The grass was warm beneath me.

My face was hot
from the sun.

I rose to say goodbye
and touch his name.

The cemetery
transmogrified.

The ground swelled.

His arms reached out to me—
and I was home.

From Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems (Yakima, WA: Cave Moon Press, 2013; e-version: Two Sylvias Press, 2013)

***

I buy a new pen—

you slip

from the nib—

I write

us home

from Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimer’s (Cave Moon Press, 2014; Two Sylvias Press, 2014, e version)

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a non-fiction writer and poet with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. She’s the founder of the 25-year-old It’s About Time Writer’s Reading Series, the longest running non-university-supported reading series in Seattle. (About Time meets the 2^nd Thurs of every month at the Ballard library). Esther is the author of Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimer’s (Yakima, WA.: Cave Moon Press, 2014) and Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems (Yakima, WA: Cave Moon Press, 2013) and other works. She has a bunch of kids and grandkids who keep her hopping—and a big German Shepherd named Emma. www.estherhelfgott.com