Survivor

-Walter Hess

It took some time
to look at all those pictures,
the black and white ones;
to hear those stories once again;
heads nodding toward
her and him;

that book of  shadows
echo of terror
when we were kids,
who knew enough
to fill in that which happened;
knew to perfection that desire
no, the need to stay apart,
away from them;

from that which happened
endlessly to those you loved
but not to you.

Bat Mitzvah - Portion Noah

-Walter Hess

The drowned souls

when the springs roared up
the floods through the riven abyss
then opened as well
all the windows of heaven.  

The drowned children

no foothold below
and the throat choking waters
and all the drowned mothers  
inhaling  the water
though it might have been gas.

Then died every life that had
breath in its nostrils excepting
that just man
who walked with his God.

So she stood in the pulpit
this thirteen year old
contending with God
like Jacob and Moses
this covenant’s daughter
and she asked, no, demanded
to know who was just
though he call up the dawn
and show morning its place.

Wrapped in that shawl -
the shawl of the drowned 
woven four fathers back

spoke of seed time and harvest
the unfinished God
the wind, the dove,
and the sprig of olive.

Walter Hess was born in Germany and arrived in the US in 1940 via Ecuador. He is  a retired film editor.  His  poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review,  Barrow Street,  Mima’Amakim. Translations from the German of the poetry of Hans Sahl have appeared in Metamorphosis. He was awarded a prize from The Academy of American Poets in 2002. In 2003 he received from the  Nyman Foundation, a prize, along with a substantial cash award for a selection from his memoir.