not the one which whispers
expanding bellies where futures grow
but the one where old men sit
in corner chairs which have lost their rock
and windows glisten with steam from the last breaths
which keep them with us for only a few more moments
to witness how an ending can be as slow as the beginning,
bookends to a lived life of servitude and honor
where roles fall off bodies like Halloween costumes
stripped at the beginning of a new month into foot prints
on hardened floors which no longer make their mark
from the wisdom you have bestowed
just months after the beginning of a new year
your last one of the decade your Holocaust parents never made it to
and all I want to say is that may you leave us in the most peaceful
and painless way, the same way you have brought joy onto the
rainbow of everybody’s path you have passed on all these years.
