in memory of Dorothy Stern

Now your breath leaves,
     And you return to hollow, shofar,
And we, so broken, shevarim,
Cry at the hollowness of all bones.
It is written that no one knows how the
     Shofar was meant to sound.
Not true…
Love, like ours for you, has always been
     The great clarion-tekiah,
That fills our lungs and lives;
Death is the gasping staccato
     Teruah-wail of grief;
How hard now to take up the shofar
    Of the new year,
And bless your memory
    By beginning again.

Tamar Stern has been published in Kerem, Poetica, The Healing Muse, Jewish Literary Journal, and at ritualwell.org.  She has published a chapbook, ” Beauty and Blessing- Art and Poetry Inspired by the Jewish Year.