SHOVELS
In a Polish forest as a boy
In a Cleveland driveway as an old man
He shoveled, he shoveled
The secret was to spin and fall
A heartbeat in advance of the gunshots
Over the hole in history
He shoveled, he shoveled
A heartbeat in advance of the aspirin
In a Cleveland snowdrift as an old man
In a Polish winter on another continent
He shoveled, he shoveled
In Bialowieza, Europe’s last old-growth forest
Trees like people hunted to extinction
Children like winged seeds sailing to a far soil
He shoveled, he shoveled
A little divot in a big continent
And shook out seeds from a paper packet
Better than clawing his way down
As he clawed his way up
Through a Polish mass grave as a boy
In Bialowieza, where the last oaks crowded into a ghetto
His pale forearm sprouting in the moonlight
Dirt and blood lining his fingernails
Lying on his back in the mound
He shoveled, he shoveled
Screaming soundlessly into the soundless flurries
In a Cleveland driveway as an old man
In a Polish forest as a boy
—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Amit Majmudar: “I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland filled with Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their descendants. I was always fascinated by the histories that lived in the accents and eyes of my friends’ grandparents. This poem was prompted by my memory of a classmate’s grandfather who survived the Holocaust by hiding in Europe’s last old-growth forest and died in an Ohio winter many decades later, while shoveling snow. The image of the shovel connected, for me, Josh’s grandfather’s past and his end, for he had been forced, when a child, to help dig a mass grave.” (web)
