Is Anything too hard for the Lord?
—Genesis, 18:14
Hineni
Is that You, God, in the shaking leaves
in the changed light of August, ushering
in the solemn season: Who will live/die?
I stand stilled in green shade, in wonder,
my bare skin bumped up to answer Your
poplar call, my early shofar, my Elul.
When a girl in my HS class started swaying
when praying, we called it geshukelt & wondered.
I was a reader, stayed up nights to finish
whole novels by flashlight, under cover,
my synagogue. I preferred story to psalms
though I was raised to blessings before meals
praise & prayer for everything. Somehow
I came late to spirit—I am here now.
Dust to Dust
I came late to spirit—I am here now
behind the barn, on a blue mid-summer
afternoon, in silence, breathing in/out
with the trees, a giving made for living
together. On my right, the graveyard for two
under the old maple reminds me: Sarah
& Thomas McMahon—the tenant farmers
who worked this land, raised dairy cattle, made hay
& called this place home—breathed here before me.
We had to talk their house & barn into
standing tall again. In their hay field now
apples grow & ponies graze. We sit dappled
in birch shade & let the leaves do the talking.
We’re old enough to prefer trees to people.
My Father’s Synagogue
If, like me, he’d preferred trees to people
he would’ve had a standing minyan for Shabbos—
without waiting at the corner to beg passersby
on their way to another shul— & fulfilled
his mother’s ambition for him, renown,
like the grandfather he was named for. He could’ve
had forests, multiple minyans, tens to the nth
in trunks of every texture, thickness, height,
quorums of trees for collective prayer.
Even the Baal Shem believed a private appeal
to God, speaking plainly, in Yiddish even,
alone in the forest, more powerful.
If my father had accepted the tall
pines in our yard as members, if like me.
In the Garden
I grew up with pines in our yard—members
of the bungalow colony we lived in
year round—with overlapping circles of needles,
sticky sap, shade. With only these pines & nine
of us. We didn’t know life was hard until
neighbors came, friends for each age. We lost our
solitude, got busy with cliques, jealousies—
criticism of skirts that didn’t cover knees,
of the 60s-style hand-me-down mustard coat
that wasn’t in—& knew we were naked.
Houses displaced the pines. My father’s minyan
grew & shrank with the weather, a rain-day shul.
My mother’s refrain: What will the neighbors say.
I promise every family is scary.
“If You Want It Darker” —Leonard Cohen
I promise every family is scary
starting with the first, its blame game: Adam
points to Eve, Eve to the snake, snake to God,
who incites Cain to stand up against Abel
& calls forth Am I my brother’s keeper?
My own mother, for whom love wasn’t enough.
Moved a sea & ocean away from birthplace
she became an angry mother. And me,
my little family of different kinds,
ponies as kids. Lord, forgive my preference
for Your first creations: skies & stars, earth
& grass, plants, trees, even the hawk with wind
in its wings, with talons for taking life.
I’ll take birds, fish, creeping things, all but man.
Tikkun
I’ll take birds, fish, creeping things, all, but man.
Our great horned owl hoots early evenings
& seconds later his for-life wife answers
in her lower register, telling us
all is well with them, if not with the world,
that his wing is holding up post rehab.
.05” rain got day-glo efts crossing
the road, fall migration to the wetland,
until low temps slowed their hearts to a halt
& they were getting run over. We used leaves
to move them, their toxic red a warning
to predators: birds, snakes, us. These tiny
salamanders that regenerate damaged
limbs, spines, eyes, also gladdened our frayed hearts.
Is anything too hard for the Lord? – Genesis
Our frayed hearts, flayed limbs, pained spines, preyed upon,
damaged by all the damage in this damaged world
for every good, a not good, for every wonder,
a horror. Yesterday, a bird flew into
the driver’s side of my car, became a streak
of green fatigue. This morning, I found a vole
in the pony’s water bucket. Last week
a chipmunk. When a third creature drowned, I knew
it wasn’t just a slip & filled
shallow pans with fresh water. You haven’t sent
rain in weeks. As a child, I loved thunder
in summer, the change. Even at sixty,
I am stirred by storm, wind & whirl, asking
Is that you, God, in the shaking leaves?
_______
Pearl Abraham is the author of four novels, most recently, American Taliban and The Seventh Beggar (Koret Int’l, shortlist). Essays, stories and reviews have appeared in various publications. Animal Voices/Mineral Hum, a collection of stories in progress, was shortlisted for the 2018 McCarthy Prize. Recently published stories and poems are “On the Seventh Day” (Judith Magazine), “Fluxus on Pulver,” (Air/Light), “Four Entered Pardes: Five Poems” (Amethyst Review), “For Eden & Carmel” (RitualWell), and “My Father’s Synagogue” (Honorable Mention, Voices, Israel Prize). Her translation from Yiddish of a Rokhl Korn poem, “Ikh volt gevolt amul deyn mamen zen,” appeared on In geveb, and Yankev Glatshteyn’s “Fraynt” is forthcoming. Emeritus Professor since 2022, Abraham founded and directed an MFA in Fiction and edited the sentence craft webpage, S.