Gift of the Raspberry
Lyn Lifshin
Don't poison your day
she smiles,
her black eyes bright.
Use the beacon of the past,
the darkness
to outline the present
that we often take
for granted.
I saw in the work camp
beauty: my friend,
though starving,
fifty pounds,
found a raspberry--
kept it in her pocket all day
for me.
What kept me going?
It was the memory
of the ordinary day,
the kind I'd, then,
have thought boring.
It was all I dreamt of
behind barbed wire.
Days after the gift
of the raspberry
Sasha gave me
the biggest gift:
on the Death march
she begged,
unable to go on,
though I could have
curled up next to her,
that I must go on