Poetry by Debora

God, resting

Forget your life
Say god is great

Not just today
When you're happy
But yesterday
When you couldn't
Get out of bed
Those weeks and months
Those years when you couldn't
Get out of bed
That was god resting
Tired of what we've done
With this world

It's not your life
That's been on hold
Waiting till you’re well enough
It’s god's invitation
To let this life
Be enough

When sickness flattens
You again
When failure and success haunt
Like hungry ghosts whose
Forks and knives clatter
In your ear
Forget your plan
And sing
The song is that moment
When nothing works
And only god is left

Samuel

The November after Fanny died, I couldn't sleep
in case I should wake up to find the last leaf
fallen from its tree.

In front of my house stands one maple,
down at the park are more, maples, oaks and sycamore.
Each night I worried, when the colors leave me,
how will I find my minyan?

So, I gathered leaves in November.
Early in the morning, before the street cleaner
swept them away, I became a squirrel,
my coat pockets stuffed with a winter supply of life.

For one year I'm asked to make prayers
in the name of life for my Fanny, but I find no comfort
in the winter when the trees stand bare.

If I fill my pockets with leaves in November,
will I be less poor when the wind cries out later on
and I have something besides words and my memory
to rub my hands against?

If I lose my voice from a flu before the winter's end,
will You receive my prayers from the silence
of 10 brown and crumpled maple leaves
laid out in a circle on my kitchen table?

Will You hear them begging,
like the ones on the corner who have no home
making their lives as I do, wondering how, without a voice,
anyone will hear them when they're asked, just the same,
to say their Kaddish, because they're human and something
they love has been taken from them
and they know nothing, anymore, of praising life
even if they had a voice?
Will You hear my prayers, my friend, even on a day such as that?

Vocabulary

Breathe my name into your hand
and I will listen for the spelling of yours.

This alphabet that I learn from you
has been waiting since before I was born.

I ache to pronounce the letters correctly.
Consonants and vowels, syllables and sentences,

A whole vocabulary of prayer
that can only be spoken in your presence.

Was it you who taught me all that I know about God?
Or was it God who taught me to look for Her face in you?

In my dreams I looked for rubies and silver
and listened to the wind.

The doors I walked toward stood closed
like a whisper, or an ancient tongue

I could no longer understand.
It was your name on my tongue

that I heard on the wind.
It’s the vocabulary translated by your skin

That I pronounce holy in this house of our worship.
Breathe my name into your hand

And it will warm the ring
I have placed around your finger.

Speak to me in the language you learned from God
before you knew the meaning of words,

and I will answer you on our wedding night
and the morning after,

And each day that follows night
for as long as we live.

Vocabulary was written for the wedding of two women who are dear friends of mine.