A blissful era
of walking down Forbes
The people you’d see
A five-minute errand takes an hour
and usually ends up involving a snack
The Rosenbaums, the Shermans
Rachel, in her Emma Kaufman shirt
She sat for the boys before she went off to college
Remember Newmans? Poli’s? Sodini’s?
Karen’s piano teacher had her baby
I’ll have the salmon spread
That guy from the drugstore
The CMU post-grad
The one with the bike
He lives in that two-unit near Allderdice
Murray is packed all the way down
It’s taking forever, but nobody cares
A blink and surprise the streetlights are on
electric menorahs in all the shop windows
And finally snow!
Spinning dots through the dark
In your eyebrows, on your tongue
The bakery lady
Russian accent and Happy Chanukah pin
gives you a cookie
Everyone’s excited and wants to get home
That’s how it was
Could it ever be again?
A crazy man went to Tree of Life
With his crazy cache of crazy weapons
That our crazy world allows
And shouted “All Jews Must Die”
Like in Germany
He killed our doctor
And our grandmother
Our cousins and brothers and aunts and our sisters
Our neighbors and friends
Who prayed and sought fellowship
Whom we loved more than we knew
Because we never thought we could lose them
I remember
going to a synagogue.
You could just open the door and walk inside.
— David Eligator
David Eligator is an attorney living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up in Squirrel Hill (on Beacon Street) from 1972 until leaving for college in 1983. Before that, he lived in Oakmont.
First Published: November 12, 2018, 6:57 p.m.
