He was a big, brawny bully,
a boulder for a brain,
a brick for a heart,
just part of the crowd at the park.
I was four.
Enjoying being with the adults,
picking up branches, twigs
for a July 4th bonfire.
He had not found much, so, he grabbed me,
slung me over his shoulder, said,
“So, der es no vood! Ve uus you!”
I became a hornets nest,
my Irish mother, a shrieking demon,
my Jewish father, a New York Giant linebacker,
Sam Huff in shorts.
The German tried to put me down,
to get rid of me, somehow.
But I, enraged, terrified,
had wrapped his hair in my fists.
It was 1952.
Jews, survivors, with numbered wrist tattoos
sat in parks, feeding pigeons,
talking to the dead.
Dads ship had sunk six Nazi U-boats
in the North Atlantic just eight years earlier.

Even now, looking back over 60 years
at that morons monumental callousness
scares me to death.
How do we learn?
How do we not burn?