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GOLGOTHA MORNING
The faces of the crowd are blank.
Why me, I wonder?
Surely God can spare me if he wants to.
Why should I question God?
A better life awaits beyond this madness,
this spectacle of horror.
My friends have all gone.
No one is here to watch me die,
snuffed out in the prime of life.
No one calls to me.
No one asks my blessing. They dare not.
No one can carry my cross for me.
No one reaches out to wipe the sweat from my brow,
or reassure me that above all else,
I am a child of God.
And so, as the people hang their heads,
and the clouds shroud the sun,
I walk alone to my death
on a gray Golgotha morning
in Auschwitz.
SEVENTY
Castro turns 70,
smiles at the cake
in the shape
of Cuba.
He blows out all the candles,
each one extinguished
like a thousand
hopes and dreams.
His once black beard
is now a
scraggly gray
like the storm clouds
over Havana.
Maria Elena
writes her poems of freedom
by candlelight each night,
and fears the dawn
when Castro's agents
rush in
tearing her words and spirit
to shreds,
jamming the pages
into her mouth,
her torn lips
dripping blood
like all too many
sacrificial lambs.
MEMORIES OF A MAN
1923 - 1993
Today my father
wears his factory face --
too many frowns
for a man of forty.
We walk to the park,
his calloused hands
relax their grip,
and he holds my
tiny fingers
with something akin
to reverence.
He teaches me baseball--
my first game of catch.
"Two hands, Paul, " he says. The weight of the world
is lifted from his shoulders.
He smiles again;
he's living a childhood
that he somehow missed.
Down through the years,
he's always there--
shy, silent figure;
the times he yelled at me fading away
like passing decades.
My mother passes away;
depression is his companion now.
There are days
when we walk to the park,
and he tells me
how much he misses her
and longs to join her.
I walk those streets
by myself now,
and I think of my father
while others play catch.
A wayward ball rolls to me.
"Throw it here, mister,"
the little boy says,
but I heave it skyward
with all my might.
"Two hands, Daddy"
Copyright 1996
Paul Juszcyk
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