The Green Jungle
The green jungle
outside my window
conceals mysteries—
what my neighbor is up to,
where the cats disappear,
what stirs beneath the leaves.
Hell, that jungle is thick,
so thick I think of cutting it down.
Mostly because it shelters snakes
and other creatures,
hiding in its tangled shadows.
Critters like Tiki,
and maybe even
a time machine.
Grandma smiles at me
from the windowsill,
as if she can read my thoughts.
But she is a distant memory now,
a voice from a vanished world.
She lived through World War II
in a shattered Germany,
with five children to feed.
Fleeing from one relative's house
to another in the middle of the night,
while bombs fell from the sky,
leaving only moments to escape.
One of those children
was my mother.
In 1945 she was nine years old.
Most of what they endured
remains hidden inside her pretty head,
buried beneath the years.
Perhaps that is one of God's graces—
That memory spared her
some of the horror.
But her body remembers.
It remembers hunger.
It remembers scarcity.
It remembers not knowing
who was friend or foe.
Before the victors divided the country,
before borders hardened
between East and West,
my mother escaped westward.
She was one of the lucky ones.
And as I stare into the jungle
outside my window,
I wonder what else survives unseen—
the snakes,
the cats,
the forgotten stories,
and the roots of old fears
still growing beneath the surface,
hidden like a forest
too dense to enter.
