For a while before the holidays I was dedicating Tuesdays on my blog for sharing writings of my former students. Most of what I shared was their thoughts on the children of the Holocaust.
Today I want to share a poem that a student wrote about his grandfather. Jasper was a 7th grader I taught several years ago. I thought he evoked several emotions in this poignant poem.
Grandpa
Grandpa was really funny.
Last time I saw Grandpa,
He was in the house in the country,
In Minnesota.
It was in the summer,
With a million mosquitoes.
He had a milk mustache,
And he said the funniest word I ever heard.
Skunkabalunka.
He said when he was my age,
He started working on a little farm,
Loving cows and selling milk.
He worked a lot, and he worked hard,
And he worked all the time,
Until he got a job
Selling machines that milked cows.
He got real good at selling,
So that he moved up in his life,
All the way to the top of his company.
I didn't know him well enough,
Because I was only nine when he died.
All I remember was my cousin Hugo,
Standing at the door to the funeral.
And I remember this old gray box of ashes.
When they buried it in this hole in the ground,
I felt sad.
And I remember they planted one Swedish tree,
They call it a Linden tree.
Someday I would like to go back and see that tree,
And see how big it has grown.
Even though Grandpa died,
He was like the roots of my family.
He got planted in the ground,
And now a tree is growing up to stand for all he left behind.
by Jasper
Dianne
2010-the Year of Longings
PHOTOGRAPH: A picture I took of my husband and our only grandson, Kendall, several years ago.
