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.