Eilech: And Rivkeh Said: I Will Go

It is an old story.

something shining appears

on the horizon of the ordinary,

a messenger arrives

   mystery at last is

   searching for me -

ten camels and one will be mine.

My young self

knows without hesitation

how to say Eilech: I will go.

I love crossing

the threshold of my mother’s tent.

forgetting to look back

at all I was loosing

    and even though

    it would shatter me

    over and over

following this road

I discover my life.

 

I was never happier

riding high on that camel

when everything

I longed for seemed possible -

and so we left the green fields,

and rolling mountains

descending into the

midbar. a bareness

I had never known

was possible.

Is this our destination?

I asked the messenger

who wordlessly motioned toward

the far end of the field

where a sad man walked,

his darkened eyes, cast down.

This, this is my husband?

I fell hard: it was a long way down.

I hid my tears behind

a veil, beginning my new

path of deception:

how else could I survive?

When he bent towards

me our broken

hearts met in that dusty ground,

his hands gentle with

my shattered eilech

as I silently wept:

is this why I exist?

 

We wed in the tent

of his mother Sara,

may her memory always be

for a blessing,

attended by the holy oaks

of Mamre,  protected

from the tent of his father

whose ropes still bound him:

how can anyone

return from such a mountain?

Walking, now an old woman

unveiled in Yitzchak’s field

of sorrow I asked: how did the great

river of my love get so diverted?  -

one son, the dreamer, living far away

with his abundance of wives and children

while my life is with the son

I never loved enough

who never deserved this.

 

At long last I learned

how to live in the split

homeland of my tribe,

like the oak once struck by lightening

I slowly began to grow a new branch -

grandmother to the children

dwelling close to me, so many bodies

hungry to be cherished.

I became an open tent -

all were welcomed

across my threshold

to the belonging I spent my whole life

longing for.

Eilech, I sang, returning from the

renewed fields.

this is why I exist.