Things were coming to a close.
We couldn’t sleep.
It was already late enough.

As it had before, it started with a song.
A call to rise.
Some were stirred to weep.

There was a fear and a love as mysterious
As death, like a new moon still concealed,
As dark as the light
Behind your own head.

We smiled our way through the end,
reassured, that we were healthy,
That this was the way of all things.
To die a little bit,
Or at least leave behind something undone.

We were so close,
To death, that we forgot to eat.

We emerged softer, cradled gently,
Walking and waving into
A deserted mind.

After some time, we grew a new, second skin,
loose enough to hold everything that remained, all of us
And everything else.

*

We pulled it closer and closer.
We stayed long enough until it stuck.

*

Now it is starting to rain.
It is already late enough.

Our journey has hardened into images
That begin to darken.

What remains
Is the wisdom and the light
of our own skin and bones.

*

First we crack our shell open to the sky.
Now pregnant with water.

It is bright
And we are ready as we’ll ever be.

Then we peel the skin from the bottom up,
And then we snap our  bones, top down.

*

You helped me stack and carry them.

Last year you were just the right height
To stand proudly beneath our porch.
Pulling each to its final resting place
As I passed them to you.

This year, you hunch over,
Your growing head grazing the steel ceiling.

 

Rabbi Dr. Hillel Broder is the Head of School of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, MD. He holds a BA in English and MA in Jewish Philosophy from Yeshiva University, and a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. He has published his work in various journals, as well as two books of poetry, Counting Spheres and Daily Blessings.