Roots
I’ve been soaking them in a wheelbarrow,
a little like bathing a baby,
rubbing off any remaining dirt
to see their vital darkness,
smell their resin,
feel their bumps, U-
turns tapered like tusks,
reaching like rays of light.
A buckthorn’s jagged root
the length of my keyboard
seemed ancient and lonely.
I scraped off the dark red bark,
peeled off the softer layer of phloem,
then, whittled a blocky crescent moon
out of the lemon-yellow wood, which,
when it lived in this moist New England
ground among voles, fungi, and sow bugs,
did not rot; while my father lies
in his Jerusalem grave;
and our forebears mingle
in the fertile soil of Poland.
Some nights, I hear them calling me in Yiddish,
telling me, I think, to rise from my warm bed
for some kind of familial duty;
and I promise them I will
finish the sculpture.
Joel Moskowitz, an artist and retired picture framer, is writing poems about living in a house at the edge of a forest in Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, MuddyRiverPoetryReview.com, BostonPoetryMagazine.com, AmethystMagazine.org and Soul-Lit.com. He is a First Prize winner of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest.
Amethyst Review 