Miriam Her Tzara’at Ours

 

Va'yidabair Adonai el Miriam -

 

where are the books of Miriam

teachings  visions   stories

the people retold and passed on

to their daughters and sons?

Remember 

you are born through water,

sea to river, the One

sea, the One river,

never the same.  Remember

the teachings of the midwives,

the push and letting be,

sacred blood and waters

mixing, the blessings

of how we are never

really in control.

 

Remember

as it is only the men

in this desert wandering

invited up the mountain,

to be the judges, only the sons

allowed to serve in the Mishkan

while the ancient order of ritual

women, our mirrors melted,

must hide in our tents

in an encroaching

silence, as if we were

still enslaved. 

My tzara’at.

 

How to survive the descent

gazing into the face

of your own erasure?

When Persephone was abducted

Cyane in despair turned to water

while Demeter, fell into human form,

a grieving mother, cut off from her powers.

Miriam taken down became a disease,

her skin that barrier between body

and Mystery inflamed,

broken

 

and still no one forgot her.

The women called her

back, gathering herbs

they seeped for long hours

into healing elixirs, soothing emollients.

They brought soft skins, cooling waters,

singing to her through the heat

of her suffering and still

it was not enough.

 

They came to her cloaked,

in the night, the brothers of Miriam,

three elders under a full moon

who had known one womb,

who had once sung each other

through perilous crossings -

Miriam who soon would turn into water, Moshe

into mountain and Aaron to the

breathe of prayer.

 

Moshe wept at the vision

of her affliction:

My teacher, my sister,

forgive my stutter,

my selfishness, my silencing.

El na refanah lah,

please heal her

sang the brothers of Miriam.

Tell us, achoti, our sister

how to heal you, how to

heal each other.

 

And so they did as Miriam

taught, as she had learned listening

to the midwives on the river banks,

as they had learned from their mothers,

to uncover the medicine

from the seed of the aching story

and so they returned 

on the seventh night

with the two sacred birds, 

one for the sake of freedom

one for slaughter - gathering

its life blood in an earthen pot 

with hyssop, a scarlet thread,

cedar wood, with water from the well 

of the mothers, dipping its

wings, anointing their sister’s wounds 

seven times, singing the prayers 

of the ancestors, clothing her

in the soft priestly linen of Aaron,

sewn with pomegranates and bells

to call her back. 

Each held for a long moment

against their breast

the beating heart and longing

of that last bird.

El na refanah la, Moshe called

as she released

the bird, this illness

this captivity so that

her words might rise

to call forever

from the white spaces

between the words:

Va Yidabair Miriam