A man alone in a bomb shelter for five,
formerly handsome, nearly forty looking fifty
from loneliness and fear and disassembled dreams
starts a letter with a line learned as a child
heartfelt loving words from a mother’s lullaby
working his way through a long love letter
full of words in careful yet cramped order
a plea, more or less, for love,
salvation, forgiveness, reprieve,
he’s lost in the words learned during a lifetime
of lost lullabies replaced by harsh songs
of pursuing love and salvation
and forgiveness and reprieve.
The man inserts the long letter
into a wine bottle he had been saving
for better days, even bearable days,
a bottle for two to celebrate love
or the end of hostilities
they will end, have to end,
he whispers to the walls
the wine finished like the letter
in haste but with strange hopefulness
he leaves his fortified hiding place
walks the deserted streets to the water’s edge
and hurls the bottle toward another world.
A woman, a hundred years hence,
walking along an isolated beach
off limits, still contaminated, yet she dares
sick of restrictions and hiding
amazed not by the distance or sentiments
the itemized desires, glorification of love
or heartfelt loving words
from a mother’s long-ago lullaby
but by the numerous misspellings
and neatly printed address of a city
that no longer exists.
Canadian poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published 25 books, including An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2018), Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2019), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2020), Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2021), Acting on the Island (Stories, Pottersfield Press, 2022), As You Continue to Wait (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2022), and My Post-Holocaust Second Generation Voice: History / Memory / Identity (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2025).
Published 2/14/26