What to Carry 

You never know when the war will come,

her mother said. You have to be ready.

Most things are unimportant.

You must take your gold, your family jewels.

Diamonds will buy you food. 

Gold will save your life. Forget silver, too heavy.

Take sturdy boots with two pairs of socks,

a warm, goose-down comforter on your back,

one picture, no books. Leave it all.

You will have to walk, sleep in a ditch, walk.

Pack lightly. What you carry, will protect you.

From starving, from freezing. That’s what matters.

Goose-down and gold. Hunger and snow.

She still has her goose-down coverlet,

useless in California. Her mother squished it

into a suitcase the first time she came to visit.

The down came from geese plucked decades ago

In Bielewicze, by her Grandma, Nina.

Diamonds? She sold her rings

to pay for the divorce, keep the house

with pomegranates and orange trees.

Her shoes are useless too –

a rainbow of high heels in the closet.

Starlight 

The Soviets came in 1939.

They shot her uncle in the street,

and took his widow, Aunt Tonia,

with their two sons to Siberia. All in 24 hours.

Her father did not wait. He sold what he could,

They went through the “green border”

back to his family near Lublin.

Germans were not half as bad.

Two pairs – a parent, a child – walking quietly

in a single file through deep snow drifts.

Long shadows on the sparkling, midnight white.

The guide took them in a boat across the river Bug.

Smooth, black water between brilliant banks.

Twisted tree branches, turning.

The moon hid behind clouds.

Stars scattered.  The guide told her

to take off her coat. He tore out the lining,

counted the gold coins her mother had sown

into the seams.  He tore apart her teddy bear,

took the jewels from his belly.

I got frostbite on my cheeks and hands that night.

Look at the spots, she told her daughter. 

We had paid him already. You cannot trust

anyone, not anyone at all. 

 The Spoon

It was made of rough metal, thick and light.

Its grey, unpolished surface looked like

no other spoon she ever saw.

Grandma said: Ah, yes, that spoon

was made of a plane shot down

near the Mieleszki forest.

People gathered metal scraps to melt

into spoons. We used to carve ours

from birch-wood.  Aluminum was better.

What about the pilot? What happened to him?

Children never stop asking questions.

Grandma shrugs.  We found his parachute,

cut the silk into squares to filter milk,

make cheese. But the pilot?
 

I heard the Germans took him,

came back for the plane.

We did not get much,

 just some cheesecloth

and this one spoon.

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© Copyright, 2014, Maja Trochimczyk.
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