It is an old story.
something shining appears
on the horizon of the ordinary,
a messenger arrives
mystery at last is
searching for me –
Where does wisdom
and forgiveness live? –
everywhere and nowhere,
in Ur, Haran and the valleys
and roads of Canaan
In the end
all she could do
was wail then
leave her body,
her y’lalah
a shofar’s broken
call
Before: the whole heart, the broken heart
Simchat TOrah 10,07.2023
Sometimes we get
stuck, leave the wrong way,
the cord wrapped round
our neck, the path too narrow.
of the forest, after the fire,
and floods, a sodden
smoky grief. I am nowhere
while everywhere, having lost
a path to my exaltation,
innocent expansive joy I begin
God is like the sun
a light too fierce to face
so choose life
I wander stripped of awe
handless, unable to shape
clay on the still spinning wheel,
having forgotten the melody
even the impulse
to sing
There she sat in her void
life and word still a dark whole
and she said: let there be
self, and there was
pink flailing breathing –
reaching to find the familiar edges
of what had been womb.
I was named for weariness
for the exhaustion of women
bearing children in pain and danger,
dying too often. I was named
by my mother Adina