Supper, Erev Rosh Hashana
(To hear Shelley recite this poem, click here.)

Perhaps (though I think
otherwise) it was the time of
year - its suggestion - but
I'm certain I could hear,
mingling on the edges of their
laughter: Tekiah! Teruah!
Jubilee! Then a playful question
for me and time: This family,
how long have they been here?
(Talesim in plastic bags draped
upon a chair. Can I deny
I saw them there; exclude from
memory the time of year? Yet I
heard the trumpets clearly.)

On the edges of their laughter,
ancient tropes: curling voices,
canting solemn seesaw
minors, sing Tekiah!
I knew at last, they are
the before and the after.
Rejoicing! Adoring
the Past, they wrest it from
antiquity to dress it Now;
Leviticus and Numbers settles
on this house, on the late
Illinois corn standing still
green in coincidence
of Tishri and September, sing
Tekiah! Exultant, we greet
our timelessness. Tomorrow
this acre is a street
and Ezra reads the law.

(This family knows how much
we share, knows more is passed
by Jews at table than potatoes.)

They share their sons with me. I
thought to ask, In such
households are all sons called
Isaac?

I thought to tell them,
On the second day your
story will be read. I thought to
tell them, Burgeoning
fruit of the Millennia -
Sages, sons and fathers
of Sages - you instruct us all
in wisdom and innocence,
and the pages we read
you will write, have written.
At this table, where all time
today is mine, all sons are mine.
Do you remember?
We stood once on a street
by the water gate, heard
Ezra read the Law; Heard
Tekiah-Tekiah-Tekiah!

Times beyond counting
we have gone apart, yet come
again together at this table,
by this street by the water gate.
This is our singleness of time;
the time we are adoring.
The ram's horn persuades us:
Tekiah! Yom Teruah!

(Had I forgotten this day, or
known it forever? On this
Eve of the first day
of the seventh month, I sit
with friends and it is revealed:
On the edges of our laughter
we are inscribed
in the Book of Life.)