RUNNER UP
Secrets Poem by Lisa Grunberger
1. When my Father was moving from being to being nothing I was about to go for a bike ride. His right hand rose up from under the blue blanket as he patted the bed for me to sit. I sat and stroked his face so thin and unshaven it appeared slender as the Flatiron building. 2. In summer, we could sit in the yard for hours eating cherries, throwing the pits the dog would chase. We’re planting cherry trees he’d say. In winter, we raced through bowls of green pistachios seeing who could crack them faster. We’d set aside the sealed ones, the ones that stubbornly refused to be opened, the ones with no crack. Daddy said they have secrets they can’t bear to share with us yet. He poured the uncracked nuts into a ceramic bowl. He never disturbed the bowl but sometimes he would lift it as though it were a seashell. He would nod his head. He was a quiet man. 3. You will listen to your Father’s slow breath, place ice chips on his cracked lips. You will listen to the final rattle and remember a baby’s noisemaker, Daddy’s keys. 4. Any stillness I possess belongs in a yard where another family lives in the midst of cherry trees they cannot see.
Lisa Grunberger, is author of Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position and Born Knowing. Op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof selected her poem “The Story of the Letter J” in his NYT column in 2017. Her play, Almost Pregnant, about infertility, adoption and motherhood, premiered in Philadelphia. She is Associate Professor in English at Temple University and Arts and Culture Editor at The Philadelphia Jewish Voice.
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