To the Poet on the Roof

-Claudia M. Reder

Febraury 22, 2011

We flavored the steaming chicken soup

with leeks and lined the long tables

with bowls of radiant matzoh balls.

Feverishly cooking, we didn’t know

words had fallen into our shoes and cuffs,

scribbled themselves onto napkins,

fine linens, and scraps. Stuffing these finds

into sacks we summon you, the wood

we knock on for luck, the grace of language.

Go now. Strip night

to its essentials.

Dine on whatever you stumble upon:

tiny letters folded in socks, novels scribed

in teensy alphabets, secrets stashed in damp

cardboard tubes. Even in sleep, we lie awake,

attentive. Though we grumble, snore,

      send us dreams.

Claudia Reder, author of My Father and Miro and Other Poems (Bright Hill Press, 2001) has been published in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Literary Journal, Poetica, and New Millennium Writings, among others. One poem received first prize in the Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize from Lilith Magazine. She teaches at California State University at Channel Islands, and is working on her next poetry manuscript, Uncertain Earth.

Copyright Claudia M. Reder/The New Vilna Review 2011.