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
Idwell
when he’s
gone

Whereshall
I
when
he’sFrom 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 GraveI 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 2nd 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