The Dolphin's Waterproof Suitcase

Sura Ettele, my Bubbe,
where are your shtetl albums,
the poems you stitched
to the updown rhythm
of a footpulsed sewing machine,
your knee beating updown time
to the threading of dreams?

I have no photo, no poems,
no dainty yellowing lace,
only this:

That you escaped Poland
crossing a river to dry land,
two-year-old Izzie
at first in your arms,
then up on your shoulders,
and then, as the waters deepened,
Izzie swimming along

beside you.
That you and small Izzie
touched the other side,
not with the shirts on your backs,
for even these

had turned to mud.

There's no suitcase to look for.
You started again

with what you had.

And what you had was neat arrays

of double helix symmetry,
collective memories

of an earlier journey,
the crossing of the Red Sea;
a shared family faith
in the inventive, energetic
bringing on of miracles,
the body rhythms

of your sewing machine's poetry,
the pulse of the Song at the Sea.

And what did Miriam, sister of Moses,
pack
when she, before you,
left in haste? Skin of a lamb,
wrapped around

some precious memento?
One item I know she carried:
Her tambourine. Necessity of life:
a rhythm instrument
to stir the women to wonder, rejoice
in the energetic, inventive
bringing on of miracles.

They arrived, feet dry,
at the shores of the Red Sea.
And here I snorkel
this sunrise morning
in blue waves of the Red Sea.

I swim alongside a silvery fish
masked in brilliant blue,
a sunyellow circle
symmetric round each eye.

We swim in rhythm side by side
til my fish darts deep.
He swims to the future
without a suitcase.
The symmetries of sunyellow, blue,
the silver swishrhythm of his tailfin
are the stories he'll carry forward
to his children's children.
No suitcase,wheeled or otherwise.

(Dolphins did not need
to invent the wheel
or the suitcase.
There is nothing they need to carry
outside of their skin.)

Sura Ettele, my Bubbe,
I have no photoes of your early days,
your mother.
My heart stitches rhythmic connection
to our shared great great grandmother
Miriam.

But where is your tambourine?

In the back seat of the car,
me a little granddaughter in braids,
you would tap a rhythm on my knee
for me to guess the song.
And I always guessed the song.

It is Miriam's song, the Song at the Sea!
It is the story
that needs no photographs,
the narrative of my pulse,
a rhythmic, durable,
waterproof faith
in the inventive, energetic
bringing on of miracles.