midrashic poetry - Elana Klugman

Nishmah, Shma: Let us be a listening people

Shma, listen
for how we might be
holy bodies,
a holy people.

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

Please well of grace, keeper of
thresholds, root and
belly of all endings, all beginnings,
lead me into exile

I walk
through rubble
turning towards
the burning earth

crow caws
singling a pathway
from sun to chamomile

crow
insists I
awaken
to my position
woven by oak

I remember
how it was to burn
while others
assumed
I was not being
consumed