A Dream of Matzoh Ball Soup

My grandmother didn’t die of a stroke
when I was in college, no, no, no,

she rose up out of her wheelchair
& danced the hora with the nurses,

then came home to us & cooked
enough matzoh ball soup for an army

& forty years later, we’re still eating
that soup for supper, then raising hands

in the air in praise & later, after
she sings me to sleep with a Yiddish song

or two, I dream of her salt & pepper hair
blowing & glowing in the April light,

her eyes squinting to raisins
but when I wake it’s always raining

& she’s not here, not anywhere
but in the photo on my desk

& all that soup we’ve been consuming
is the ever salty broth of sorrow.

*

Lana Hechtman Ayers’ poems appear in Peregrine, The London Reader, and Rattle, among others. Her ninth poetry collection, The Autobiography of Rain is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.