Was I Ida Strauss
I have a fear of drowning in deep waters, dark and cold;
I dream the waves are parted revealing Death's threshold.
I wonder, trembling in my bed, if another life I've known;
is there a body beneath the sea, dissolved, bone of my bone?
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
We boarded the Titanic, her maiden voyage from the shore,
just the two of us together, me and my husband Isidore.
Grandly cradled on the ocean within the ship of dreams,
unaware an ice tower waited in the frigid, black extremes.
Roast squab and French ice creams, champagne and caviar
were the first class luxuries, sailing on beneath the stars.
Near midnight the vessel shuddered as though wounded in the heart;
we waited captain's orders to load the lifeboats, disembark.
"Women first!" the crew commanded; older men could also go,
but Isidore would not depart, the truest gentleman I know.
He entreated me to leave the ship, but like Ruth of long ago,
I replied, "We've lived together many years. Where you go, I go."
We faced Death as we faced life, companions to the end . . .
climbing the staircase to heaven, hand in hand with my best friend.
The story of Isidore and Ida Strauss is true; they were first class passengers on the Titanic. Isidore was co-owner of Macy's. My connection to Ida is fiction.
The grand staircase on the Titanic was called "the staircase to Heaven."
Faye Lanham Gibson
Copyright, June 22, 2014
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