Coattails – a poem by Carol V. Davis

Coattails


Rabbi Bluzhov recounted he was standing on one 
side of a pit with a young free thinker, their friendship 
forged in the camps, impossible anywhere else.
Two halves of a world without overlap. 
Cemented by disparate certitude, the young man 
resigned to imminent death, the rabbi adamant 
in his opposition. The Nazi, an Angel of Death, 
taunted them with life if they could jump over. 

Decades later, the rabbi recounted how 
he grasped the coattails of his father.
his father’s father, great grandfather, 
all the way to Abraham.
When he opened his eyes, both prisoners 
were standing on the other side of the pit.

The story is repeated from one century
to the next, on another continent, sometimes
in a language many doubted would survive.
Until now, on a warm Sabbath morning, 
the rabbi’s grandson recounts it to a room 
filled with believers and non-believers, 
each side still as chess pieces as they listen.

Carol V. Davis is the author of Below Zero, Because I Cannot Leave This Body and Between Storms. She won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize (USA) for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, she taught in Siberia, winter 2018 and teaches in Los Angeles. A 3rd Fulbright for Russia was awarded, postponed because of Covid and now cancelled. Donna Sternberg and Dancers is using Davis’ poetry in the recent piece, “Ancestors’ Voices.”