By Michael H. Brownstein
My son and his wife go to the synagogue
The Friday someone decides to reopen the city.
After days of heat and humidity, sun stroke,
Sweat, mosquitoes and giant horse flies,
Rain and then more rain, a cold rain, the grass
Slippery, the street a small stream and a pool.
Their two-year-old baby sits on her daddy’s lapAnd doesn’t wonder what is going on
During the service. She is quiet and peaceful,
Attentive and thinking. This is now her world
And this is now their world. The Ark is opened,
The congregation rises, the congregation prays,
Bows at the right moment, sits when they are told,
And when the service ends, everyone – my son,
His wife, their baby girl – head to the back room
For fresh bread and pastries, grapes and chocolate.
Outside it is still raining. Inside everything
Full of honey and the smile of a loved daughter
Bright as an evening star rising in the north.
| Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, I am grateful that you had the wherewithal to write a second Father’s Day poem, after realizing that last Sunday was not Father’s Day, but successfully convincing your editor that it was! Happy The Day!
ReplyDeletePerfection.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Roger!
ReplyDeleteI was with you until the last line. A star rising in the north is a metaphor too far for me. Apart from my inability to even imagine such an impossible astronomical phenomenon, Polaris is not even a first magnitude star. Is there a precedent for that image in the literature or the Torah I am unaware of?
ReplyDelete