You Teach Me Faith

By Yehoshua November

 

You stand before a stove in winter,

cooking soup,

and I know how far I have taken you

from home,

the sacrifice you make, as few Jewish women do, 

in covering your hair,

 

your long dark hair,

the one physical possession you were proud of.

 

And I know this is part of what you give up

so that we may lie beside each other.

 

And I know it is you who taught me, our lives are not our own.

Pantoum

By Yehoshua November

 

There is a realm where hidden cabalists, dressed as peddlers, are still walking

along the snowy road to Lubavitch,

and a young boy, once again, pulls his first silver fish out of the lake in Vitebsk.

Time only belongs to this world.

 

And along the snowy road to Lubavitch

you can still hear the stream spring from beneath a gravestone whose letters have faded.

Time only belongs to this world.

Somewhere I am seeing your face for the first time.

 

You can still hear the stream spring from beneath a gravestone whose letters have faded.

Somewhere a man begins to chisel the lost name and the years between life and death.

Somewhere I am seeing your face for the first time,

and I am walking back to the yeshiva, lonely, not knowing we will be married.

 

Somewhere a man begins to chisel the lost name and the years between life and death,

and a young boy, over and over again, pulls his first silver fish out of the lake in Vitebsk.

And I am walking back to the yeshiva, lonely, not knowing we will wed.

There is a realm where the hidden cabalists, dressed as peddlers, are still walking.

Yehoshua November's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Margie, Provincetown Arts, New Works Review, and Prairie Schooner, which nominated one of his poems for a Pushcart Prize and selected a group of his poems as the winner of the Bernice Slote Award for emerging writers. His work has also appeared in a few Jewish publications, including the Forward, Europen Judaism, New Vilna Review, Midstream, Poetica, and Zeek. His manuscript, "God's Optimism,"  is a finalist in the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and an earlier version of the work was a finalist in the 2008 Spire Press poetry book competition.  He teaches at Rutgers University and Touro College. 

Prayer

By Herb Berman

 

       God is the partner of our most intimate soliloquies. ...whenever you                 are talking to yourself in utmost sincerity and ultimate solitude—he          to whom you are addressing yourself may justifiably be called God.

       —Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning—

 

I remember

the rose and amber slant of dawn

and waking to mystery and Mozart

and she turned to me

 

but now

in the long black morning

I wake too early

(an affliction of age)

and retreat to my silent gray study

 

and yet

there’s birdsong

the chiding of squirrels

and a glowing behind the clouds

 

soon gray

will bloom into color and song

and children

will squeal down the sidewalk

with slender young mothers

dressed in sunshine and laughter

and I’ll watch them

a voyeur of sorts

 

it was

an ordinary day

in the life of an ordinary man

who woke up early

and found himself

mumbling

weeping

praying to

his unrepentant God

Herb Berman is a semi-retired lawyer and labor arbitrator. He's been
published in "East on Central," "Humanistic Judaism," "Lucid Rhythms,"
"The Chronicle," and the web pages of Highland Park Poetry and The
Illinois State Poetry Society. He's placed in two contests sponsored by
"Highland Park Poetry." By invitation, he has given readings of his poems
at The Deerfield (Illinois) Public Library, Congregation Beth Or in
Deerfield, and other venues in the Chicago area.