The first really bona fide
rain-soaked day in months,
some little relief from the drought,

is the day I pick to venture to
the Holocaust Museum
in Washington, behind the Smithsonian.

The numbers, the experience
are numbing, even to a man
who lost no relatives to that hellish time,

who only knows friends
who lost uncles,
or aunts, or grandparents.

I may have seen some of their bones today
in those photographs, the ones I see
even behind my eyelids,

as I ride alone on the Metro,
back toward Arlington Station.
Rain pelts my window –

rivulets track diagonally,
pulled by the train’s wind,
like long, slow tears.

08/30/2002

Posted on 08/30/2002
Copyright © 2026 Bruce W Niedt