In this week’s poem, “two cents plain,” Anna Wrobel finds solace in of a glass of seltzer (for which the title is an old Brooklyn catch-phrase) and a wartime act of chance and humanity that resulted in her own existence. I love this poem’s intimate, conversational storytelling, and its larger vision of how small acts in the world can further life.

Wrobel, born of WWII refugees, is a historian, teacher, poet and Holocaust Studies educator. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies including The Cafe Review, Lilith and Jewish Currents, and her two poetry collections are “Marengo Street” (2012) and “The Arrangement of Things” (2018). Anna’s experience includes theater, farming, artisanal craft, construction, local teachers’ union president and single mother. Along with writer/musician Jim Donnelly, Anna hosted the long-running poetry series, Lowry’s Lodge.

two cents plain

in relief of my anguish
he offered seltzer and
Judy Collins’ Wildflowers

he reminded me that I am
here because a young
German conscript didn’t shoot
my Soviet soldier father

the youth with a
twinkle in his eye
living himself to
breathe another day
the very same as the
one he gave away
with a night of no bullets
to waken fighting men
so nearly dead in sleep

so I sip the seltzer
sing along some with Judy
and thank a German soldier
for sparing the Jewish
seed that made me

he was right—
the seltzer did the trick

– By Anna Wrobel

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “two cents plain,” copyright ©2022 by Anna Wrobel, was originally published in Hole in the Head Review. It appears by permission of the author.