Grandma, with your long hair and guitar.
Grandma with your communist sweater and dark thoughts.
I can’t imagine what you must have been singing.

You rode that boat to Bremen,
Though your family had fled years ago,
You had escaped them, you prodigal daughter.

And your father, your father with his thinning hair,
And his broken philosophy and his eugenics flair,
Condemned you to twenty years of isolation.

Pop-Pop, still young and happy, waited at the harbor.
His tie stiff and his ears ringing,
And watched you stalk down the gangplank.

A chaste hug was exchanged,
And you were proper, oh, so proper,
You cruised along the cobblestones to separate hotels.

You were married in August,
That brutal halcyon month.
And he looked like me for the last time,

An Amsterdam tulip tucked in his lapel,
You clutching your flowers like a lifeline,
That last remnant of a life left behind.

Spent in those last weeks adrift, with poetry and scars.
You laughed like a queen, fallen back
In that field of pity, his arms around you.

Just kids, really, you two.
Did you know then of the years to come?
That memorialized beginning ended in a spent urn of ashes.

Pop-Pop, did you see your atoms agitated?
After an endless cycle of retrievers and German shepherds,
It was your turn.

Grandma, you live alone now,
Four has become three has become two.
Abby ingested suicide last week.

You say you don’t know what to do.
You talk of shooting the creaking pump,
I know you can’t bear it, the weight setting down.

This world wasn’t built for being left alone.
So pack your bags, and move to God’s promised city,
And we will walk once more in the night, me and you.