ROSH HASHANAH 5779

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Image source: Makom Shalom

Life,         
you    dark improbable Mystery
would have us trust impossibility
called miracles by some
and the incredible to be sure
is that  life goes on and there is grace among the violences
for it does
among the bloodied, looted, burning streets that scream       
is also the scream of a child’s first breath
then, if we had eyes to see
out of rubble and the fire called hate
passion burns in giving itself way
for no other reason than to give
now as during a thousand always
impossibility is being born
is being lived in the never answered why
we have not despaired in our trying

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in several anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

FOR ROSH HASHANAH

by Alan Walowitz

       

Victor (Zeke) Zonana (1924-2016)

Now onto this New Year, bad as it promises to be—
there’s rumor You, too, have given up,
filled with Your own brand of regret:
seeing us squander our gifts—
wasting our will as if it were a game,
failing to care for our own,
or honor this place we like to call home.
So now You’re headed out-of-town,
like some will-o’-the-wisp
to locate some new folks, perhaps, and begin
In the beginning, all over again.

But if I’m wrong and it be Thy will
and You’re listening still,
dear God, what the hell,
let us be inscribed again, then sealed.

Though please feel free to pass on him
we’ve loved so well
who takes his place one final time
and happily chants the ancient prayers
for those of us so far removed, we don’t remember how.
But unlike You, our renegade and sometimes vengeful God,
this old man’s not rash nor filled with rage.
But of his own considered will he, too, wants out.
Let it be recorded here, as in Aleppo once,
a temperate man took his life in his hands,
then gently chose—of his own free will—to let it go.


Alan Walowitz has been published in various places on the web and off. He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in his native borough of Queens, NY. Alan’s chapbook Exactly Like Love was published by Osedax Press in 2016 and is now in its second printing.

SALAD OF LATE SUMMER TOMATOES ON ROSH HASHANAH

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya

Sheltered from scorch
at a west-facing wall,
morning spent shaded,
they’re rather small.

Cut in halves, then thirds,
then thirds again.
Eighteen chunks each.
L’chaim. Say when.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, German Lit major, and two-time Pushcart nominee. Her work has won Special Merit and Honorable Mention in the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest of Comstock Review. Photos and poems appear in many journals and anthologies She co-hosts Fourth Sundays, a poetry series in Claremont, California. Kattywompus Press publishes her chapbooks Burrowing Song (2013) and Eggs Satori (2014), and Aldrich Press publishes her book-length collection The Book of Knots and Their Untying (2016).