A Language Searching for a Home

My mother tongue, my birth language,
is far from dead, yet everyone
reassures me it’s dying.
It’s unhoused, unnoticed, easily
overlooked, challenging to pronounce,
and at times, dangerous to speak.

Yet it is sought out by grandchildren
of survivors, offered in universities,
spoken in conclaves of conversationalists
with a desire to rekindle Yiddish,
a language no one can easily define.

It has contributed a rich vocabulary
to embed in other languages,
and English is a beneficiary.
It fills a niche with bagels,
chutzpah, feh, cabal, schlep,
mensch, shrek, kvetch, and yenta.

It carries ancestral genes,
lore and ancient wisdom,
uses facial expression and
shoulder shrugs to punctuate
a phrase.

And it is the only language
that offered me lullabies
when I needed them
to fall asleep in foreign lands.