Matilda Waltzing


You’d never expect it from a Yankee sailor:
He understood her Russian request,
Give me a kiss, and acquiesced…
in Australia, 1943.

My mother’s immigrant father
sensed the American’s virtues,
saw a fine partner for his business and daughter,
didn’t foresee his Matilda waltzing away.

Or, you might say she took a great leap

from New South Wales to the New World,
where her sailor waited with equal faith
forged by separation of war
and the sustenance of letters.

Michigan chilled the girl who’d never known snow,
though she warmed to his Slavic clan.
Their marriage, good and fruitful;
he, a comfort when she shivered for home.

With five children grown,  
my daddy gave her Florida,
the beach and salty sun she missed,
flowers to bring back the scents of her youth.

It’s been sixty-six years,
and my mother has always known:
Shy as she was she couldn’t have said it in English.
Yet she’d dance their waltz all over again. 

Her sailor gone a decade now,
she gets by alone but longs for Down Under,
still sees her father standing below the gangway,
his hat filling up with rain.