Wendy Dickstein – Three Poems

Looking For Forests

After the vet put Simba down
he lent you a shovel
dumped the limp body into your arms
and told you to find a forest
you shrouded him in a clean white sheet
found your way to Karmiel Forest
dug a hole by the side of the road
laid the old dog down
covered him gently with smoothed earth
then faltered home
to face grieving children.

A month after her seventeenth birthday
Noam took a trip of remembrance with her class
at Warsaw Airport they descended
like a flock of chattering birds
they too were looking for forests.
Pinchas, their veteran guide
knew where all the bodies were buried
like Simba but without the tenderness.

Lopuchowo, Jedwabne, Bronica
The girls could not pronounce the names
looked down at the ground seething with horror
no one could utter a sound.

But in the silence above the crooked trees
they could hear like flashes of fire
the five-note refrain of a common wood pigeon
“Wu huuu wu hu hu”
lamenting these seventy years.

Back in Jerusalem the grandmothers
who knew love was strong as death
were praying for their girls
a soft landing:
“O my dove, in the cleft of the rock, hidden by the cliff
let me see your face, let me hear your voice…
Until the day has breathed its light and the shadows flee away.”

Delivering the Morning News

“Demons are everywhere: They haunt dark places … even the crumbs left on the dinner table…
Rav Huna said: each one of us has a thousand to his left and ten thousand to his right.” Talmud Brachot 6a

Even before the first bird finds its perch
a motorcycle roars into my sleep
I dream its halt, its thump
of paper on the stoop.
if I slip out of bed, look out the window fast enough
I’ll see a flash of helmet, jacket, gloves,
glimpse morning’s rising demons.

When I was young, a thin boy pedaling against the wind
Slid quietly into my morning.
He’d aim the paper at the stoop, imagine
crowds cheering as he tossed the ball
no helmets then, only a baseball cap
sometimes he’d whistle, heralding birdsong
then hurry home, grab a thick slice of bread and jam,
snatch his satchel full of books and pedal off to school.

These days not many linger over newsprint
spread across the breakfast table
beside the coffee cups, eggcups, toast
most browse the headlines from a screen,
shrug shoulders, get on with their day.

In all these years, news hasn’t changed,
Demons, everywhere, still haunt
the crumbs of morning.

Losing a Good Neighbor, Rosh Hodesh Kislev

Early this morning, as we sang in the new month
our neighbor Moshe took his life
a small solitary man
said he didn’t need a wife to nag him
said he’d fought in the Yom Kippur war
alongside our barber Adi.
Moshe was getting on in years
but was always there to help a neighbor
planting cactus to keep the cats away
finding a water leak we couldn’t find
on the day I forgot my shopping cart
he carried my vegetables home from the shuk.
I knew he had a bad back, but he insisted.

Early this morning Moshe left a note on the door of the synagogue
across from his little house on Gilboa Street
where he’d lived his life
saying he was gone and that God
should write him out of His Book.