Seeds
My in-laws lived in Ellenville, on Hillcrest Avenue,
mother-in-law a refugee from a Greenfield Park farm,
father-in-law straight outta Henry Street.
They met at a Young Zionists meeting in New York City,
and after he did his bit during the War (four years in Hawaii,
after Pearl Harbor, but who knew what might happen),
they moved with their young baby to a kibbutz in
pre-State Israel.
For a dozen years they lived their dream:
farmer, teacher, side by side with Ben Gurion,
two more babies for the communal nursery,
visiting day on Sundays, my ex the youngest.
He was a preemie, defective heart that could
only be patched in the U S of A.
He and his mother went back, two years away.
When it became clear they needed to work
to pay off the doctors, his father and sisters joined them
back to Ellenville, small house, step backwards.
He worked at a knife factory by day,
wrote letters to the New York Times at night,
tore them up in the morning.
She was secretary to a childhood friend,
now a millionaire TV antennas maker.
She was a Democrat, too afraid
to reveal their true leanings, even in the good ol’
U S of A, freedom here, in truth,
a mediocre commodity.
So it went for thirty years, huddled in the Catskills,
planning their escape when all was paid in full,
children settled into their own orbits.
This is where I tapped out when their youngest,
my ex, unhandsome and angry, could not
assert himself on even this planet.
I found out later, bodies and minds failing,
they instead transplanted south.
Maybe the warmth reminded them of the desert.
Maybe Florida’s palm trees echoed the bare
sandy fields of their old kibbutz.
They have since died, without one visit back,
without one more look at what has become of
what seeds were planted long ago.
Their children, happy in these States, perhaps think of
those kibbutz days as some Maurice Sendak fable.
Seeds have sprout, here and there, black vines twisted
around all their good intentions.
CAR 4/18/25
