One Tree

Into a football stadium they put him,
my father, his mother, his people.
I don't know how he felt
because I never asked.
There is often an aching vacuum,
never breached,
between those who've
tumbled through
war and holocaust
and their children who
have always known peace.

What I know is this -
That he led his mother to safety
through a hole in the wall
used by young boys to watch
football games for free.
At nine years old he preserved his family tree.
I've seen this tree -
drawn by my grandmother
with forty-four limbs cut off,
names circled and marked
Auschwitz.