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The Last Glass

8/8/2021

10 Comments

 
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This has been a time of much loss on many levels: personal losses as beloved ones become ill and pass away, as our work and roles shift unpredictably in response to the pandemic and changing conditions; communal loss, as members of our communities with black and brown skin continue to be singled out, hunted down, suppressed, and our most cherished stories about who we are as people and nations shatter over and over; and global loss, as the oceans warm, the ice caps melt, rainforests turn to ash as skies darken with the smoke of out-of-control fires, whole species disappear, and masses of people, seeking food and water and basic safety make arduous journeys across impossible terrain, only to be turned away at human-made borders. How to be with our heart-brokenness, even as we direct our energies toward what we can still do to repair, renew, comfort, and hold? To continue to love as we grieve? This poem speaks to the potency of remembering, of fully receiving the legacies of our personal and human histories, the pain and the strength, if we're to keep our hearts open and available in the face of this Great Undoing.

​The Last Glass
 
I loved that last glass,
the only one remaining 
from its set.
Thick, dependable, sturdy,
just the right height
for catching the pressed juice 
of carrots and apples, 
incised on its underside:
“made in Russia,”
 
like my grandfather,
Sam, Sam Asher,
the silent one
who grinned his
broken-toothed smile,
who rarely spoke,
and called all of his grandchildren
“Bobby,” even us girls.
 
Perhaps he meant to say
“Baby,” but “Bobby” was how
it sounded, in his sparse Russian-Yiddish
flavored English. There were other
Ashers in Chicago, cousins,
an older sister—Tante Sarah Levin--
but by the time I was born
most were gone--
 
disappeared, the family broken,
the many we never knew. 
Had they been sturdy, dependable,
strong? How had they disappeared--
one by one, or all at once,
from their shtetl outside Vitebsk, 
where they’d been living 
in uneasy peace in the first decade
of the twentieth century, 
at the time when young Sam 
ran away, boarded a ship,
made it to Baltimore, then headed west?
 
Was he the last remaining one,
all the others, siblings, parents, in-laws
broken or disappeared
long, long before his
heart cracked one day in a hospital bed,
long, long before that last glass
slipped from my hand
and shattered in the sink?
 
                    --Diane Elliot, July 15 2021
 


10 Comments
Yehuda L. Hyman
8/9/2021 07:08:30 pm

Such a gorgeous poem. I loved reading it. I saw it all in mind as I read the words. So clear - like a beautiful glass. Thank you for this poem.
Incidentally, my father, who was from Poland, called my older sister "Bobby" - which I thought was really strange - I never thought of it until I read this poem - perhaps he was saying "Baby" - his spoken English was poor so perhaps.
In any event, thank you for this breauitful poem - Made in Russia.

Reply
Diane Elliot link
8/9/2021 09:17:16 pm

Thank you for your generous reading, and for taking time to comment, Yehuda. I wonder if "Bobby" is some Yiddish term of endearment? My Uncle Harry, Sam's youngest child, and his wife, Aunt Ardith, named their first-born Robert, just so when Grandpa called him "Bobby," it would actually be his name. Robert was just a couple of years old when Sam died...

Reply
Becky Lyman
8/10/2021 03:52:30 am

Thank you, I really liked its simplicity and power. This poem made me want to cherish where my own relatives came from, in a whole, non-judgemental way.

Reply
Diane Elliot link
8/14/2021 03:16:58 pm

Thanks for your beautiful response, Becky.

Reply
thank you Diane. for the poem and for your introduction- calling us up to remember the strength we carry- the tenderness in hearts and remembered voices and places- I treasure a glass I have that was in my Grandparents kitchen
8/10/2021 10:48:21 am

hi
thank you Diane
♥️

Reply
Burt Bialik
8/10/2021 09:08:55 pm

Very Sweet! I got a sense of Your Sweet Grandfather! Sending You Blessings!

Burt

Reply
Diane Elliot link
8/14/2021 03:18:12 pm

Thanks for your blessings, B
urt. Good to hear from you in this way!

Reply
Michele
8/12/2021 09:14:00 am

You have captured the essence of having and losing, snatches of memory and the meaning of fragile. Thank you.

Reply
Diane Elliot link
8/14/2021 03:19:04 pm

Mmmm, thank you Michele. So much does feel fragile these days.

Reply
Larry Vaughan
12/22/2021 07:38:04 pm

Rabbi Diane, Don’t know why, but your narrative poem brought tears to my eyes. As for my offerings, in-the-xeroxing-works, they reach towards, but cannot contain such rapturous beauty/grace, within such felt grief/loss, without bursting — the envelop of their own existence. Rabbi Burt will discover such, when I send them to him, Joel Schipper, and Cord, my German Studies Editors, come early January; a belated 85th birthday gift for Rabbi Burt (in lieu of the present I had desired.) His influence evident, directly and indirectly, poems + poetics. (My poetry-days/daze over; now, a jigsaw puzzle, rev. “memoir”; assessment, German National Reckoning (Conrad & Cord’s Conference [Berlin, 2016] + Compendium [2021] / U. S. [us]).

Reply



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    Rabbi Diane Elliot resides in the hills of El Sobrante, California, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco. She enjoys the peace of its softly contoured hills, the sunlight filtered through the small grove of redwoods on the hillside next to her home, and the dazzling, ever-changing beauty of the sky. 

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Photography Gratitude to  Susan Freundlich, Eli Zaturansky, Lea Delson, and Wilderness Torah.
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