touched, my mind replies,
"I've read these stories elsewhere,
in a different hand" - after Bernice Bricklin
this pandit spoke of being
Surprisingly Happy, surprisingly jewish
tales of alte-bubbies marking
the moment of departure with
a salty stream a lake made of women
folding up her seventy years
in a serpentine posture
her body teaches a pathway
of yogic mastery from the womb
the greater to shock with the word sober
the wax impacted in my
ears doesn't block the pathway to my
brain as these words trigger
the same story I read somewhere
someone some context some same
spiritual direction from the stories
in dialogue with my own drash
the pandit rabbi's silejnce speaks
like a spare neuronic spark interrupting
mindfulness like the "j" in silence
a teacher transforms by touching
by being
didn't isaac bashevis singer say that
did i read that in english
did a jew write it being buddhist
did a bu write it being jewish
so much more modest this time
the young, broken divorcee
brought two toddlers to a minyan
eight feet tall in her tallit
Woman manned the pulpit
chanting and reclaiming
the ancient men's text
the ancient men's rite
the ancient men's story
in forty years she would be that
woman chatting across generations
woman folding into a skater's spiral
woman finding the origin and pulsing
power through the periphery of time
a dikshit whose journey becomes
my own as I walk her path with unstable man's feet
my ninety year old friend comments
i so enjoyed these stories
when i read them when they first
came out over nine times ninety
years ago
or was it only
April, 2010
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