Grandmother Hannah comes to me at Pesach and when I am lighting the sabbath candles. The sweet wine in the cup has her breath.... a little winter no spring can melt.

Piercy evokes the way ritual and sensory detail can summon the dead into the present. Pesach (Passover) and the lighting of Sabbath candles frame memory within Jewish domestic practice: the cup of sweet wine, the candles, and the repeated gestures of observance become conduits through which the speaker feels her grandmother’s presence. The line about “a little winter no spring can melt” suggests grief as a permanent, cold residue—something time and renewal cannot fully dissolve. Yet the poem’s tenderness implies that this enduring sorrow is intertwined with continuity: the grandmother lives on in breath, taste, and inherited tradition.