The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.
In This Land
In this land the rocks speak holy words,
the wind chants psalms as it blows through
branches of date palms,
the jackal howls in the wilderness.
The people in this land are complex
rushing here and there like New Yorkers
on steroids, yet stopping to offer
the stranger a cup of water.
The people of this land know
a cup of water comes from the narrow place
between life and death.
In this land people have claims
to places that may never have existed,
that Place in the desert where Hagar’s son
almost died of thirst
that Place on the mountain where Sarah’s son
was bound and almost sacrificed.
What place in the desert belongs to
the children of Ishmael?
What mountain belongs to
the children of Isaac?
The stones keep speaking holy words
the wind keeps chanting psalms
the people keep rushing here and there
stumbling toward an uncertain future.
The jackal still howls in the wilderness,
but the land will endure forever.
Carnival of Awe and Fear
Come face what happened, history and truth
hear the screams of agony at our Torture Booth.
Come on in, don’t be lame, play Raging Fear, it’s just a game.
Jump on Virtual Genocide, our latest roller coaster ride.
Want to see the devil’s face and learn his secret name?
Maybe you’ll find out when you ride the Terror Train.
Rape & torture, terror and blood,
how awesome it is to drown in the Flood.
Between good and evil it’s hard to choose
cause both God & Satan take off your shoes.
You can’t change the future if you don’t face the past
without Fear and Terror, Redemption won’t last.
After officially retiring in 2014, I started a blog, writing only in prose. Poetry had never held much interest for me, having been forced to memorize and recite numerous poems during my elementary school years. In early 2020, the growing Pandemic necessitated great changes to our accepted norms of social interaction. It seemed like a good idea to gather resources for emotional survival, and I decided one resource would be the poems of Robert Frost. It turned out that poetry was just what I needed. I returned to the poetic form, this time with an understanding and deep appreciation of its power.
My first poems were about daily life, flowers, love, observations from my walks, all of them pretty sappy. My realization that there was a deep vein of spirituality below the words was slow to develop. When the Pandemic forced me to participate in Shabbat services and celebrate High Holidays sitting alone in front of a computer screen, poetry became a lifeline and my use of specifically Jewish themes and images became one of the foundations of my writing.
I share my poems and liturgical writings on my website, on Ritualwell (a website of Reconstructionist Judaism), and many have been used in synagogue services.
Featured image in this post: Black-backed jackal Creative Commons (33204337335),Adam Tusk, creative commons via wikimedia commons.
