STORY OF A WIFE

She is still there,
Lot’s beautiful wife,
looking back on a fountain of cloud.
The twist of her neck,
you could taste it,
the stock-still salt.
Chastised or rescued,
she is still there.
She remains a marble form
persistently turning into flesh.
No wind, no rain can erode her.
Humane or only human,
she looks back.

TREE OF LIFE

for Rabbi Robert D. Levy

Pick up the gems you find
as you walk along Jew Street,
put them in a bag with a hole in it,
so that you can find them again on your way back.
Hold fast to gems, they are a text
you can read about real people.
Hold fast to scraps of paper left by
somebody’s grandson
on which are written the treble clef.
Listen to the hand pulling back the curtain
stand in the same spot,
holding fast to stories.
If there is an ark, a container for holiness,
a life-raft, hold fast to it.
Hold fast to memories.
Those minutes were the seeds
planted for these.

Benedette (Bracha) Palazzola is a convert to Reform. She has published previously in Hanging Loose and POEM.