Ellis Island of the Mind

Ellis Island of the Mind

My wife was the bride of a thousand woes
who wore her blouse for modest memories
that gathered under cotton clouds
of smoke and tears.
Her body was a diary written
in sanguine ink to be legible
for the blind who read
the Braille of her heart
where the broken thorns
of her past are embedded
in her soul forever.

Her immigrant eyes dreamed in tears
of her bubbie who told her
about tea houses in the neighborhood
called Little Russia on the banks
of the Hudson River
where samovars competed
with the latest news
on the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery
by an upstart group
known as the Bolsheviks
among them Lenin and Stalin
whose names were of little consequence.