A scent,
remembered from morning
deepens missing,
yet the knowing
grows green, healthy tendrils
like the Golden Pothos
sitting in the window,
enjoying warming sunlight.
Images courtesy of CBC, NDTV, The Times of Israel, and The Forward
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age--
Until a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death.
In Grand Central station,
a man punches a woman in the face,
telling her it is because she is Jewish.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
Yet on a bus, a man screams,
“We don’t wear that in this country!”
to a Sikh teen about the turban of his faith.
A university student calls for the murder
of his Jewish fellow students
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet swastikas are spray painted
on a Jewish business.
In 2018 on October 27th,
A madman entered The Tree of Life Synagogue,
spewing hatred and shooting eleven dead.
But no. It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet remember,
Executive Order 9066,
those rounded up and sent to camps
here in this place.
Look hatred in its devil face,
see if you still can believe,
still convince yourself—
It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
Inside a sarcophagus of stone,
I have dwelled,
a hard place in which to learn to live,
no breath taken, heart stilled,
where all living shrinks down,
behind skin and soul,
to be bound in hieroglyphic wrappings
designed by others.
Onlookers believing
the pretense they wish to see--
as I stopped struggling for air,
a mimic of the beating rhythms of life,
accepting the coldness of the stone.
Any warmth transitory as the sun
in its travels from
season to season
from rise to set,
in these years
I have known only coldness
after any fleeting glimpse of warmth.
Such a bitter coldness--
though none would think
I lived encased within stone,
so life-like my hieroglyphic mask,
a masterful mimic I had become.
Until stone cracked,
by mountain winds and sun,
falling in splintered shards,
crumbling to dust ‘round me.
My tattered, faded wrappings
torn, hanging loosely.
Until a hand, as if in possession
of long forgotten, ancient magic,
should touch long dead embers,
and in touching rekindle flame,
swirling within, spiraling outward
warmth that does not die
upon the withdrawal of touch.
A heat lingering, warming still,
stirs hunger once thought dead to life.
Sweetness pounds a rhythm out—
starting a heart to beat again,
blessed breath returns
to deflated lungs,
the shallow breath, the weak pulse
hold ancient power,
leaving flesh and blood and bone
to move in life again,
a life reclaimed from the stone
of gray filled years.
Cautiously, hesitantly,
I step over the dust of shattered stone,
making my way toward the touch
that carefully, tenderly removed
my tattered hieroglyphic bindings,
allowing me to move freely
within my own skin.
There trembles within,
a longing I never sought to find.
Hope rises and takes Fear
within its embrace,
transforming it to joy,
as I extend my hand
to the warmth of you.
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