Poem for 8/31/21 - One Week Before Rosh Hashanah

 G-d’s Plan: An Introspection

by Alden Solovy (click the title to learn more about this poem and to hear the poet read it)

If G-d’s plan
Followed my plan,
I would have no scars on my skin
Or in my heart.

If G-d’s plan
Followed my plan,
I would not have felt the fire or the ice,
Heard the beauty or the terror,
Seen the new bud or the dying leaf.

If G-d’s plan
Followed my plan,
I would not have learned to grieve or to cherish,
To hope or surrender,
To be broken and still be whole.

What, then, keeps me locked in fear,
In dread of yielding to Your great works,
Your awesome love,
Your radiant power?
What small desire,
Petty hope –
What yearning of self  –
Blocks my service in G-d’s holy name?

G-d on high,
Release me from my judgments and designs.
Open my heart to You fully,
Without reservation.
Cast out my doubts and shames,
To receive Your divine wisdom and strength.

G-d of All Being,
Wise and true,
Make my limbs Your tools and
My voice Your messenger.
Make my heart Your tabernacle,
A dwelling place of holiness
And splendor.

© 2017 CCAR Press from This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day

Poem for 8/30/21

Brown Girl Creed (Click the Title to see more about this poet and her poem)

Barbara Jane Reyes

 I believe in my mother, the mother almighty, 

             mover of heaven and earth, 
             creator of daughters and dinner, 
             all that is always unseen, 

I believe in my mother, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Pulmano, 
             who dreamed an American dream, 
             who suffered barely making ends meet, 
             who suffered giving everything unto everyone, 
             who suffered, died, and was buried; 
             she descended into this American earth, 
             while wailing women recited novena, 
             she ascended into heaven, 
             and is seated somewhere comfortable now, 
             she’s watching the Niners game now, 
             she’s wearing her Jerry Rice jersey, 
             she’s got a Diet Pepsi and a plate of Panda Express, 
             she’s watching reruns of Murder She Wrote and Matlock 
             if the game isn’t going the way she’d like,    

I believe in my mother, in the most sacred of sisterhoods, 
             in kapwa with the kumares, the forgiveness of fear, 
             her transcendence from a tumorous body, 
             her pink jasmines and rose bushes in bloom. Amen.

Copyright © 2021 by Barbara Jane Reyes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 8/25/21

 

The Life of a Writer (Click the title to learn more about this poem and the poet)

Jalynn Harris

the life of a writer is desire                i hammer into the page                            i make up my mind: the streetlight  is not the moon, but anything can be               made beautiful under the ease                            of my hammer  i wish you could see that i write in blue ink               the color of oceans & early mornings                            & everything is clear like  tears rushing towards the chin                of my desire. i pen what i’m meant                           to pen. how deep in love i am  & how silly of me to spend all morning dreaming                about love & not expect my                            desire to set me free  the knives of my fingers tap               out the notion that if i turn the key                            it will unlock. admittedly, i am foolish                about love—a simple yes excites me—                         ‘cause i know that all that i require will be met like water meets the tongue. it’s scary             desire, a small fan at my window in the summer,                          a booklight lighting the pages of my life

Copyright © 2021 by Jalynn Harris. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 19, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Guest Blog from Lilian Yvonne Rosenbaum LCSW-C, BCB, Ph.D. - Thank you!!

I received this note from Yvonne Rosenbaum, who lives at Center Communities of Brookline. I appreciate both the kind words about me, even if they are not fully deserved! More important, Yvonne went and found an explanation of Cochlear Implants and how they work. I found the blurb and the picture helpful, and I hope you will as well. - JM

Poem for 8/24/21

 MORNING GLORY

Henri Cole (1956-) 

(Click the poet’s name to see an interview with him in The Paris Review)

Out my window, in a garden the size of an urn,

a morning glory is climbing toward me.

It is five a.m. on the ninth day of the seventh month.

Lying on my soft mats, like a long white rabbit,

I can feel the purifying flames of summer

denuding the landscape, not of birds and animals,

but of blame and illusion. I can hear the white

splashing rivers of forgetfulness and oblivion

soaking me all at once, like loving a man

without wanting him, or a baby emerging

under white light out of its mother,

not the artificial light of the hospital corridor

but of joy growing wild in the garden, its pallid blue

trumpets piercing a brocade of red leaves.

from Poems of Healing, ed. Karl Kirchwey (New York, 2021), 176.

Poem for 8/23/21

 I Believe

I assert with absolute faith
that prayers preceded God.
Prayers created God.
God created humans.
Humans create prayers
that create God who creates humanity.

- Yehudah Amichai (trans. Edward Feld)

Belief

Sometimes the atheist looking out the window sees more of God than all who pray in the synagogue or church.

- Martin Buber

Cochlear Implant Update - August 19, 2021

 Rabbi Jim’s Update

I’m writing this week from the ferry to Nantucket--and excited that I’ll have a weekend with friends (and Rosie and Puck) nearby in a peaceful place. This week also marks a milestone for me--a month has passed since I received my cochlear implant transmitter. I already knew from my own experience that the implant has made a difference in my life. Most of that difference is good: I am more aware of my surroundings and I can pick up that people are talking to me (even if I still need to ask them to repeat themselves). Some of that difference is a bit challenging: certain sounds are jarring and can dominate my attention if they are persistent (especially hissing or whistling). 

But this week, I went to my “tune up” appointment, where I underwent audiology tests for the first time since the surgery. The first test involved identifying individual words out of context; the speaker, who sounded like a refugee from a fifties anti-marajuana movie, would say “Ready” and then a word. Over the course of fifty items, I found that entire words are still a challenge, but the result was even worse than I thought: I identified only 8 of the fifty. On the other hand, I did have success in hearing individual phonemes (the sound parts of words), identifying at least one in about three-quarters of the words. That, at least, felt like progress (especially since before the implant I could identify neither whole words nor individual phonemes).

The second test was more successful. Amid a confusing hubbub of “cocktail party chatter,” I was asked to repeat the sentences that I would hear. Of those, I picked up about 50% of the words, most of the time in the context of a phrase or sentence: the context proved to be crucial for my brain to extrapolate from imperfect hearing to reasonable (but certainly not perfect) comprehension.

Despite these exciting results, it’s even more exciting that it’s still only a month into the experiment--I hope it will continue to improve...

Poem for 8/18/21

 A Committee of Scholars Describe the Future Without Me

by Jimmy Carter

Some shy professors, forced to write

about a time that's bound to come

when my earthly life is done

described my ultimate demise

in lovely euphemistic words

invoking pleasant visions of

burial rites, with undertakers,

friends, kinfolks, and pious pastors

gathered round my flowery casket

eyes uplifted

breaking new semantic ground

by not just saying

I have passed on

joined my maker

or gone to the Promised Land

but stating the lamented fact

in the best and gentlest terms

that I, now dead, have recently

reduced my level of participation.

from: Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems (New York, 1995), 25.

Poem for 8/17/21

 

Serenity Charles Bertram Johnson The storms that break and sweep about my feet, The winds that blow and tear, the rains that fall, Shall not the courage of my soul appall; I shall be conqueror, tho’ sore defeat O’erwhelm the outbound keels of all my fleet Of dreams; tho’ not one tattered sail, but all Go down mid sea; with heart serene, I’ll greet The worst or best, the stronger for the squall. My soul is set amid the storms of life,— The hurricanes of passion crash and break And tides of heathen hate sweep o’er our land; But calm amid the flying ruins of strife, Or in the leaping flames around the stake With pierced hands—my faith serene,—I stand! This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 15, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 8/16/21

 

Exile

Winifred Welles

I have made grief a gorgeous, queenly thing, And worn my melancholy with an air. My tears were big as stars to deck my hair, My silence stunning as a sapphire ring. Oh, more than any light the dark could fling A glamour over me to make me rare, Better than any color I could wear The pearly grandeur that the shadows bring. What is there left to joy for such as I? What throne can dawn upraise for me who found The dusk so royal and so rich a one? Laughter will whirl and whistle on the sky— Far from this riot I shall stand uncrowned, Disrobed, bereft, an outcast in the sun. This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 14, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 8/12/21

Usually I just type or paste the poem in this space. But today I want to point out one thing (among many) that drew me to this poem. Like Rilke in Archaic Torso of Apollo, Mary Oliver breaks the poetic fourth wall (albeit in the middle of her poem rather than at the end) with an apostrophe to her dear reader: "Have you noticed?" So: have you?

 Musical Notation: 1

Mary Oliver 

The physicality of the religious poets should not

be taken idly. He or she, who loves God, will

look most deeply into His works. Clouds are not

only vapor, but shape, mobility, silky sacks of

nourishing rain. The pear orchard is not only

profit, but a paradise of light. The luna moth,

who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few

hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a

musical notation. Have you noticed?

We had a dog once that adored flowers; no mat-

ter how briskly she went through the fields, she

must stop and consider the lilies, tiger lilies, and

other blossoming things along her way. Another

dog of our household loved sunsets and would

run off in the evenings to the most western part

of the shore and sit down on his haunches for

the whole show, that pink and peach colored

swollenness. Then home he would come trot-

ting in the alpenglow, that happy dog.

From: Mary Oliver, Thirst (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), p. 7.

Poem for 8/11/21

 

WALK DON’T RUN By Rob Bell

(Thanks for Rabbi Lior Nevo for pointing me to this poem.)

Walk, don’t run.
That’s it.
Walk, don’t run.

Slow down, breathe deeply,
and open your eyes because there’s
a whole world right here within this one. The bush doesn’t suddenly catch on fire, it’s been burning the whole time.

Moses is simply moving
slowly enough to see it. And when he does,
he takes off his sandals.

Not because
the ground has suddenly become holy,
but because he’s just now becoming aware that
the ground has been holy the whole time.

Efficiency is not God’s highest goal for your life,
neither is busyness,
or how many things you can get done in one day,
or speed, or even success.

But walking,
which leads to seeing,
now that’s something.
That’s the invitation for every one of us today,
and everyday, in every conversation, interaction,
event, and moment: to walk, not run. And in doing so,
to see a whole world right here within this one.

Poem for 8/10/21

 Opening the Heart

by Marcia Falk

At the year's turn,

in the days between,

we step away

from what we know

into the spaces

we cannot yet name.

Slowly the edges

begin to yield,

the hard places

soften,

the gate to forgiveness

opens.

from The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season (Waltham, MA: 2014), p. vii.

Poem for 8/9/21

Vacant Lot with Pokeweed

Amy Clampitt (1920-1993)

Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs

of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing--and look! here's

a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into

raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage.

Poem for 8/6/21

 Try to Praise the Mutilated World 

BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

 

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

 

Adam Zagajewski, "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" from Without End: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2002 by Adam Zagajewski. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC,  http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.

Rabbi Jim’s (Cochlear Implant) Update - August 5, 2021

It’s now about three weeks since I’ve been wearing my cochlear implant transmitter--and I’m beginning to wonder: at what point will weekly updates about that topic get boring and repetitive? For that reason, I’ve put those words in parentheses this week, and may shorten the title of these entries to just “update,” given that there are other things worth noting--even in my life! For instance: this week marks my sixth anniversary of working at CCB; I am still in disbelief that I have the privilege of working with all of you, residents and colleagues alike, and am so grateful for everything you’ve given me.

As regards the implant, I will persist at least this week, given that I’m still hearing more than I ever imagined I would and that I’ve now gained a whole new appreciation for the streams of noise entering my brain. I think I can say that before I lost hearing in my left ear some five-plus years ago, I never gave much thought to the actual experience of hearing: I could hear something or not; a room was overly noisy or it wasn’t. When the hearing went away (overnight, as sometimes happens to people), I was plunged into a disorienting preoccupation with hearing (or not): my balance was off, I couldn’t sing in tune, I had no idea where voices were coming from (it took me a while to train myself not to spin around in rapid circles like my dog in a vain attempt to locate the source of a noise). Gradually, I adjusted to the new reality, learning to aim my good ear towards my interlocutors and to ask people to mute competing noises.

Even though I was aware (even hyperaware) of locating the source of sounds, I was not yet fully aware of how my brain did the amazing work of consolidating multiple streams of noise into what I could identify as “hearing.” Nor did I fully realize that one of those streams was my own voice, which--as I now realize--includes the words we intend to say (maybe that’s not quite noise, but it is information), the noise that our vocal chords send through our skulls, and the noise our vocal chords send through the air to be picked up by our ears. Those three streams then integrate (again thanks to our amazing brains) into the “single stream” of sound we receive consciously.

When I received the transmitter for my cochlear implant, all of those layers of sound broke apart. Certainly I was aware (as I generally am) of what I intended to say, but that was presented back to me in a newly kaleidoscopic (if I can apply that word to noise) form: I was hearing my voice through my skull, to be sure, but the transmitter also seemed to be banging against my skull, in a different timbre than the deep resonance I had become accustomed to. And was what I was hearing through the transmitter really conducting through my skull, or was it sending it directly into my brain? Suddenly I was hyperaware, even more than when I was hearing only through my right ear, that I was hearing through my right ear and hearing on my left side, but not through the ear. And that skull resonance I’d always taken for granted? Now I’m hyper aware of that as well. If you’re confused and a bit exhausted by my attempt to explain these sensations, I apologize. On the other hand, confusion and exhaustion seem to be part of the learning process for me.

I’ve noticed, for instance, that each morning when I first don transmitter and begin streaming the news directly into my brain, I’m able to decipher a fair number of words and even follow some stories (I do better when the announcer reads the news than when they cut to sound bites or interviews). As time passes, however, I find that more and more words pass me by, and after about 15 minutes, most everything is gibberish. Still, I am grateful and optimistic: progress may be slow, but it is real.

Poem for 8/5/21

 

With the Lark (Click the title to learn more about this poet and to hear a different recording)

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy, Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy; Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,— Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong. All the night through, though I moan in the dark, I wake in the morning to sing with the lark. Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves, Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves. But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky, I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry; And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark, I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark. On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be, Where the rain shall not grieve thro’ the leaves of the tree, There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known, For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own; And though life has been hard and death’s pathway been dark, I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 8/4/21

 

Life

Carrie Law Morgan Figgs

Click the movie below to hear me read this poem. Or click on the title to find a link to a different recording.

• c
• 
• 
• 
• 

              1
A moment of pleasure,
    An hour of pain,
A day of sunshine,
    A week of rain,
A fortnight of peace,
  A month of strife,
These taken together
  Make up life. 

              2
One real friend
    To a dozen foes,
Two open gates,
  ’Gainst twenty that’s closed,
Prosperity’s chair,
    Then adversity’s knife;
These my friends
    Make up life.

              3
At daybreak a blossom,
    At noontime a rose,
At twilight ’tis withered,
    At evening ’tis closed.
The din of confusion,
    The strain of the fife,
These with other things
    Make up life.

              4
A smile, then a tear,
    Like a mystic pearl,
A pause, then a rush
    Into the mad whirl,
A kiss, then a stab
  From a traitor’s knife;
I think that you’ll agree with me, 
    That this (is) life.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 31, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.