Eight Months, Spring

The first of Spring
swept through my sick lungs
past the gypsies curled along the curbs
with their cans clinking of coins
their hand-woven slippers of purple and turquoise yarns
their babies’ glassy gaze into a timeless, seasonless space
I wonder if they know it is Spring.

At the corner of Swietokrzyska and Marszalkowska
the man with hollow cheeks and crooked glasses with frames that fold over his ears
kneels on a cushion
he wears a cardboard sign around his neck and
gingerly holds out a half-clenched palm between his chest and belly.
He asks nothing of those crossing the street
and the Spring air doesn’t seem to stir him.

In the morning, I woke in a sad sleep and
watched the sun rays curl round the clock of the Palace of Culture.
Eight months ago I’d left for Warsaw; eight months later came the Spring.
The same gypsies are still curled along the curbs
The man with crooked glasses is still kneeling
with his cushion
with his cardboard sign.
What had changed for them in eight months?
How do they measure their time?

* * *

Eight months is enough to know that sunlight in the winter is a gift; that a run through a snow-dusted forest chased by a cup of hot wine is a Polish novelty; that being thrust into a buzz of Yiddish songs and paluszkis and ciastko and non-alcoholic champagne can feel both alien and blessedly comfortable; that 85-year-old women in ball gowns and 14-year-old girls in halter tops can dance together quite effortlessly; that on Purim, the serving of three kinds of kosher chicken, two types of kosher kilbasa, and four cuts of Kosher salami on the flimsiest of plastic plates is “normal”; that a Holocaust survivor who lost his arm was filled with joy after making a Purim mask blue and white like the Israeli flag; that joy also comes from dancing the hora in the former Warsaw Ghetto on the eve of the Autumn Equinox with a necklace of mini-bagels strung around my neck; that I’ve been mistaken for an Italian, a Spaniard, a South American and a German; that I can now pay in exact change at the open market after mastering my Polish numbers; that I’ve painted snow-flakes on windows, made Seders and services, made mandalas, made omelets, made mistakes; that the sunsets behind the Ogrod Saski park can’t go unnoticed; that Polish tea blends and miod pitny (honeyed wine) soothe my soul; that work is complicated and so is love; that questions far out-number answers; that I have much more to learn.

Sometimes I fear that I am not enough here.
And other times I am so much here I don’t know if I’d ever leave.
Some days are stubborn and never seem to fold; I ache for a new one to take me in soon. Other days I would very much like to linger; I’d cradle life back into them again and again. I’d dance inside them as in a Spring breeze.