Space Between Breaths, by Valerie Bacharach

Birch Forest 1, by Gustav Klimt (Austria) 1902.

Space Between Breaths
            
The grandfather of my grandfather of my grandfather
hides in the space between breaths,
folds his shadow, shelters it inside his heart.
He slides himself among the birches, sweeps footprints
beneath fallen leaves.  Darkness arrives early, wind warns
of ice and snow.  The armies of the Czar search
for Jewish men, unwilling conscripts fated to die.
The grandfather of my grandfather of my grandfather
plants his toes into damp earth, roots himself, stretches
his arms starward, turns them into branches.
His hair becomes leaf, his body grows bark.
He is tree, is ghost, is memory.

Valerie Bacharach

Valerie Bacharach’s poetry has appeared in several publications including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Quarterly, US 1 Worksheets, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, The Ekphrastic Review, and Voices from the Attic.  She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic workshops and conducts weekly poetry workshops for the women at CeCe’s Place, a halfway house for women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.  Her first chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.