Retiring Hopes

Alan Berecka

June 23, 2021

He died just after I turned four,

but I believe I have one memory 

of Jonas Berecka, my grandfather.

A short man, he’s holding a large

bright red tray full of shot glasses. 

He is coercing, cajoling my mother 

to down what he considers

an obligatory dose of his homemade 

vititus—a potent liquor laced 

with honey and caraway seeds.

The tray shakes as he pleads.

An Easter morning sun

hits the hooch as it flutters 

and shimmers. The memory ends.

Everything else I know of the man

has come secondhand, stories

of a tailor in the old country,

a mill worker in Utica.

They say the day he retired 

a switch flipped in his disposition,

from sullen to jovial overnight—

Sisyphus freed from the stone.

This story I imagine to be true—

I need to be true, a shimmering

hope that flutters just beyond reach.

Alan Berecka earns a living as a reference librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. His poetry has appeared in many journals including The Concho River Review, The Windward Review, Ruminate, and The Christian Century. In 2017 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi.