SAN DIEGO –The Zoom Jewish Poets-Jewish Voices Program turned out to be an overwhelming success! The May 5th evening, normally scheduled for the Astor Judaica Library, took place in the homes of some 50 participants and listeners. Joy Heitzmann, who has served as Master of Ceremonies for the series, managed to carry out that role by phone. Thanks to the expert staff facilitators, Melanie Rubin and her assistant, Sarah Mattis, all went smoothly.
The featured poets were Elaine Olds, with several poems inspired by her father, Mara Cook, who included passages from Jewish liturgy, and Andreas Eros, who philosophized about life. Eros also read a few selections by his 18-year old son, Sasha.
Samples of the featured poets are below.
Ten people participated in the open mic segment of the program. In addition to Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices Committee Members Janice Alper, Michael Horvitz and Sara Appel-Lennon, there were song-writers Yael Gmach and Susan Lipson, and poets Annette Friend, Genine Rainbeau-Heart, June Gottleib, Nancy Sandweiss and my daughter, Harriet Wingard, who participated from Portland, Oregon.
Among the attendees were Todd Salovey, Director of the Lipinsky Jewish Arts Festival, Darren Schwartz of the Jewish Federation and Jackie Gmach, Director of the “We Are the Tree of Life” Initiative. This program can obviously be successful, even when we can only congregate virtually. Following are samples from the three featured poets:
VISITING ELLIS ISLAND (c) by Elaine Olds
I came to look for shadows, ghosts, footprints,
to see the things my father saw in 1917, when he was just a boy,
to feel what he felt, see what he saw, hear what he heard.
I came by subway, my first solo ride
from the upper West Side
to Battery park,
the ferry, past Lady Liberty, here to Ellis Island.
Restored, the building stands proud, like a monument.
I make my way to the Great Hall, where immigrants once waited, but as
soon as I step inside, I know
the shadows and ghosts won’t be found.
This huge room, once filled with a maze of iron railings
criss-crossing the space,
iron railings confining exhausted and bewildered,
fearful yet hopeful immigrants,
this enormous room that teemed
with life and sound
hour after hour, day after day is empty.
EMPTY!
Where are the aisles where Dad waited in lines
pressed against trousers, aprons, wicker baskets,
cloth-wrapped parcels tied with string?
Where is the checkpoint
where Dad and his brother Sammy
slipped past guards to find a place to play?
I want to trace Dad’s footsteps,
find the stories he told
in black and white, but they’re gone.
There are no shadows in this room now.
It’s been scrubbed clean
of sweat and fear.
The polished marble floors and walls reflect only my image.
Printed posters on tripods tell Dad’s story second hand.
Where are the smells?
I never knew such smells, Dad said, garlic mixed with cinnamon
sour milk, warm sweat, and overhanging all the scent of fear.
They sent some people back.
He was afraid as he waited to be sorted, herded,
a young steer in the chutes, hiding his face from prodding guards,
and doctors who had hooks to flip eyelids
looking for disease,
chalk to brand jackets with marks to accept or reject.
Couldn’t something have been saved,
something left as it had been then, or even reconstructed
for visitors to see?
I think of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam,
climbing the stair, steep as a ladder,
passing through the bookcase door at the top, and entering
the world of Anne Frank.
There were lots of ghosts there, in chairs,
at tables, in the dust and torn photos peeling off walls
in the small room Anne shared with Mr. Dussel.
It was as silent, that day as it had been in 1943, when the family was
hiding and people were working on the floor below.
It wasn’t silent at Ellis Island in 1917, but now my footsteps echo in
the quiet. Sixteen million voices in a hundred different tongues have been
silenced, swept away with the plaster dust and stacks of stolen names.
I came to find the ghosts, but they don’t live here any more.
Some have escaped. A few are held captive in adjacent rooms
peering out from photos on immigration forms,
and others lie buried under token pieces of rubble,
a bent chair, dusty desk, a cash register,
displayed in sealed glass cases.
*
EXODUS by Mara Cook
Here
in Egypt we stand
in the midst of the plagues.
“Stay inside,” we hear, and fear
the worst, our bubble of contentment
burst, as we hide from the world.
A thirst for freedom creeps up
then swallows us whole,
as we swallow and find
dry throats, too long parched
for those sweet waters of the Holy
and that promise of
Milk and Honey.
So we fold
ourselves
into shapes that
fit indoors,
torn between wanting
to stay safe and stay sane –
we train ourselves
to be patient as we play
with this new way
of the world, and we pray
for things to return
to “normal.”
But what is this “normal,”
the way things were?
Isn’t that what got us here in the first place?
What we yearn for is not behind us –
It lays ahead,
and though we may dread
that wandering in the desert,
it’s better
than returning to bondage
and wondering
what freedom would feel like
beneath these wings;
fettered feathers tethered
to the comfort of what’s known,
instead of letting ourselves take a chance
on freedom.
It can be scary to dare to start anew,
to embark on a journey
with no path laid out,
to shout into wilderness
filled with apprehension,
stomach clenching
around the unknown.
And it can seem as we roam
that the whole world
is a very
narrow bridge
between two cliffs,
suspended
in a rift,
the earth
far
below,
and it’s been said that the
most important thing
is not to be afraid,
but in truth,
bravery is not feeling nothing,
pretending fear doesn’t exist;
it’s kissing that tension,
drawing it near
and asking it
what it is here for.
In truth,
the whole world can feel like a
very narrow bridge, and I say the
most important part
is to not let fear win.
Begin your wilderness wanderings
not with denial,
but with a smile in the face of all that’s
real for you,
here for you.
So maybe this plague
is a blessing in disguise,
a time that’s made
s p a c e
for grace to enter now,
bending the way we grow,
reinventing ourselves as we’re blown
as seeds on the wind to the
Promised Land.
Maybe it’s not as theatric or
grand as we’d planned;
no Moses to part the seas,
but we flee
our own bondage
all the same –
from this bondage of society that
hasn’t worked in ages,
from the pain of a
failing, inhumane system that’s
chugging along to the rhythm of greed,
the masses bleeding out beneath,
from the constraints we put on ourselves by
doubting the power that lives within.
Maybe this is our modern-day miracle,
the pinnacle of a
dystopian way of life
or rather, way of strife –
to bring fresh rains
down upon us,
to drown our oppressors,
to crown a new tomorrow, so
“Hineni!” I call,
let yesterday
fall
away,
I am Here, Now,
ready with open heart
to receive and build anew.
So I let myself be planted
in the Promised Land
for in the depths of my being
there is dark, fertile soil
that makes space for the
delicate holding and
creative unfolding
of seeds.
When these seeds of intention
are mindfully placed
in this emptiness with grace
and with love,
roots will emerge,
into darkness, they surge
encouraged and enlivened by
release of sweet rains,
hydration that lands on the earth
like fingertips keeping time to the
endless song of the universe.
Soon, bright green shoots peek their
curious faces through the surface
to meet the gentle warmth
of the sun’s loving touch,
inspiration, exploration
in each moment of unfolding,
each extension of Self,
from fragile stems to sturdy trunks.
Infused with the sun’s vibrant voice,
the tree sings of a fire deep within,
always Present, though
not always tangible, or seen,
though leaves gleam in the sun
and buds teem with abundance,
seeming to wink at the birds,
a secret perched between them.
This spark of the sun,
in the wood,
in the eye of the bird,
no different from the
flames that surge,
they merge,
impossible to separate
one light from the other.
The fire is always within the wood;
it simply needs to be released
from within,
a vibrant destruction,
enlivened eruption
intentional breakdown of atoms
now scattered in patterns that
sing of what they were and
what they are becoming.
This fire in me is
kin to the fire in you
Holy Sparks, nitzotzot that
embark on this journey together,
yearning to burn away
all that is not me, and
leaving only
Presence.
And from this chasm
from which Presence is sparked,
from the cradling dark,
something forms
from the infinite grace
of emptiness.
*
TENSE PAST by Andreas Eros
The future is a gift
But the present doesn’t last
You open it and instantly
The future is the past
The past informs the present
But it doesn’t always listen
Ignoring what it has
And sets its mind to wishin’
For this and that and oft-walked tracts
It shuts its ears, ignores the facts
Of lessons learned unpleasant
But if it stopped and saw the fact
That if that moment, it unpacked
It would live in the present
The gift of life
Would surely be
Like mystery and alchemy
An unknown whirling quantity
And in its state of infancy
Be we king or peasant
It has its way with us, you see
And rips us from the present
*
HEARTSTRINGS by Sasha Eros
Two ends are connected by a single string
It bears weight, it flexes, it stretches, and bends
If it’s tout and it’s pulled, it stings
And thus damage is done to both ends
The string holds the ends, not the inverse.
As the ends grow closer, the string may shrink
So tension can cause one end to feel worse
Sometimes it’s shorter than you think.
If a nerve is struck, like a chord, it rings
The string vibrates harshly, or pulled too tightly, perhaps
This noise can be set off by the tiniest thing
And if one end pulls away, the string snaps.
*
Eileen Wingard is a freelance writer specializing in the coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com