A Garden For Children

When I was a child, perhaps precocious, seated

in a circle among other children I repeated to 

myself the word I read in stained glass on the

door that said Kindergarten and said to myself

that's Yiddish and I know what it means, it's

a garden for children. I was a child who was

taunted as a 'dirty Jew' and 'Christ-killer' so

I knew I was different but how did they know?

And before long knew too that my kind were 

being butchered in far-off mysterious Europe

overhearing dire whispers between my parents 

and their friends. As I grew older strangers often 

approached to ask where I was from, and then

'but where are you REALLY from'? In my teens 

I loved to brown in the sun absent from the 

household duties my mother imposed and then 

people would ask was I Ethiopian? Forever

awkward, careful, slightly fearful among others

watchful lest I offer hints of characteristics

defined as Jewish, pained to overhear slurs

I eventually became inured and never understood 

why another Jewish child cried in the school 

cloakroom in despair at her Jewish identity. At 

age 13 my mother had me work a summer job

at a clothing factory. There, a non-Jewish boy 

asked me for a date, and I shrank in dismay

into myself. Assessing those years I survived 

where millions could not so I am grateful but 

will not forgive. Sequestered within old age 

living now in a world of my very own I have 

achieved a secret refuge, a veritable and valued 

Garden of Eden where no one but my beloved

is permitted entry and where we are secure.