Rosh Hashanah

-Julia Elizabeth Guez

To begin again,

anew,

gather the apples and the honey,

so the newness may be sweet as milk and children,

sweet as the figs

seed-filled and green

in the springtime.

Alone, newness is only newness,

a field, fallowing.

The grass and lace and thistle and flowers laydying, dryingi

n the sun.  Wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow,

we haul the heavy white stone behind the ivy barn,

so the earth is ready,

ready as a wife or a husband

to be,

ready for the spade, ready for the rain, ready for the rows long and straight.

Listen to the shofar

in the distance,

a call to prayer?

tefilah!

In the coil of ramdancing sound,

a call to awaken,

a call to follow,

unlulling the bighorn heart.

In the field of mulch and soil and sky,

bow.

Bend the back and knee.

Ready the soil with a trowel, and

sing.  Sing.  Sing.

Every prayer is a seed.

What Is Temporary?

(For Charles Guez)

In my mind,

footsteps small enough to fit in the palm of my mother's hand, fast-fading

impress the dark wet sand,

learning to walk beside the ocean.Two tiny whitenesses of arm

raise, hands

outstretching to hold my father's first-finger and thumb

as he leans, leaning over a child

exactly six months old

thirty years ago.

Again, I ask:

What is temporary?

What is death if the smell of cologne is still stronger?

If in the eyes of my newborn son, I can still see my mother?

If we still listen to Beethoven, and

if we continue to pray

praying

prayers we could never really understand

in the Hebrew

scanning right to left,

lifting on the balls of our feet, or bowing, face covered,

the braid and fringe of a Tallis wrapping around the fingers of a hand

to be kissed, to be pressed against the side of the Torah, or to beat a fist

on the door of the fasting heart

as we would pray so many years ago

in synagogue with our father-- 

thirty, sixty, a thousand years ago,

the memory as vivid in the mind

as if it was yesterday, 

or the day before.

After five years of service with Teach For America, Julia Guez is now pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts at Columbia University.  At work on a collection of poetry called Wabi-Sabi, Guez has received a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and a Naomi Shihab Nye Fellowship to attend The Round Top Poetry Festival in Round Top, Texas.  She is now living and writing full-time in New York City.