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III. Intersecting
Sign
are you giving me a sign whatever a sign may be loaded as it is with love with light, with something like salvation a child’s appeal to night
if you are giving me a sign how shall it be known something in the floating leaf the ringing chime, the sprouting bean a twinkle in Andromeda, a call to come, to come again
if there is a sign to give why is it not alone but watercolour watered flour, stem with flower a Gorgon’s orchid grows from soil not stone
please give me a sign I will be ready when it comes even as three nails blind wounds or empty space the Helm of Darkness veils a face, reveals the face
you are giving me a sign I thought it just the sound of hooves pounding as they are with love with light, with something like salvation coming in from distance, always saddled white
this is a sign I know it now at last feel it in this bind to rock the rising sea, the Thing itself— the sign is wingèd, weighted, me —Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer
Masked - Unmasked
She’s playful, covers her face as if at a masked ball, calls herself Coincidence, and sometimes, with a giggle, Serendipity; unmask her and you’ll find Providence. —Ruth Fogelman
Meeting on Railay Beach
After the long flight to Bangkok and another flight to southern Thailand after the taxi to Diamond Cove and the long tail boat in the dark we slept well woke with birdsong and blue orchids we opened the door into February summer walked past wide brimmed gardeners patiently scraping scarlet leaves and there was the beach—
Scandinavian families with blond babies played in the warm white sand elaborate tattoos rippled in the green water, all you need here are flip flops and a straw to sip coconut milk I squinted and saw Tzahi our next door neighbor from home beautiful in the sun laughing with a bunch of friends it seemed perfectly natural to meet him here halfway across this improbable world he said this is where I want to honeymoon who’s the lucky girl I asked I don’t know Tzachi said but this is the place. —Dina Jehuda
[I live in a very small community of 150 families on a hillside in Galilee. My next door neighbor is Tzahi S. When my husband and I left for a 10 day vacation to Thailand, Tzahi’s mom said, jokingly, “ Maybe you’ll run into Tzahi.” ( He was in Thailand for a few months on his after army trip.)
Railay Beach is a tiny
island, no cars can drive there and there is no harbor, just a beach. It
took us 2 planes and a taxi and a boat to get there. We bumped into Tzahi in
the water the first morning after we arrived. —D.J.]
In Jerusalem
Walking towards my bus stop at Kikar David Remez, I bump into Larry, whom I’ve not seen in years. “The twins will celebrate their bar mitzvah next month; we want to do it at the Kotel,” he says. “Do you have any idea who can arrange it for us?” I put him in touch with the perfect person. After the celebration, our ways again part.
Past midnight, I’m on my way home from a poetry reading, through the Jewish Quarter’s deserted alleys, my cart heavy with books. Please, G-d, send someone to help me get this cart up the steps to my door. A young man appears—the answer to my prayers.
I’m uncluttering a corner, digging through dust-laden boxes of my husband’s pamphlets and papers. I find a postcard showing a field of red tulips from Amsterdam, addressed to me, from Miranda, with whom I’ve lost contact for twenty years. I find her on Facebook, contact her. She’s coming to Jerusalem at the end of the month, with plans for Aliyah.
Providence dances in Jerusalem. —Ruth Fogelman
Israel, Fears and Hashgachah Pratit
When making Aliyah to Israel two years ago, we thought that that would be it. No more struggles, no more indecision. And no more fear. But for two long years it has seemed like we were the outsiders looking in. What was the secret ticket to emuna that the sabras seemed to have wrapped securely in their back pockets? I feared so many things. Yet, ironically, my fears did not centre on the bigger, more sensational and general issues. The issues and challenges that bring even sabras to their prickly knees. No, it is rather the daily challenges and cultural differences that seemed to wear at my faith and courage. The weather extremes—the searing heat, intense sun, snowstorms, howling winds, fierce hailstones, dry, cracked arid earth. So intense, so strong. And here is little me. The insects—spiders, crawling ants, mosquitoes (even in the winter!), flies (even in the winter), scorpions (not just in the deserts!). And here is big me! The brazenness—chutzpah, open honesty, persistence, assertiveness. And here is gentle me. But one issue that has repeatedly stumped me is the seemingly straightforward act of buying petrol. At the Yishuv where I drive our children to and from school daily, there is an industrial area with a hardware store and a simple petrol pump. With a very complicated code procedure. The combination of industrial area, the Arabs wandering around, the lack of assistance, and the complicated technical coding system have meant that for our first two years of Aliyah I have shied away from buying petrol. In my fear and reluctance, I have asked my husband to “fill her up” every time. And got away with it. I have managed to ignore the petrol warning sign on the car’s dashboard and pass the buck every time… …Until today. This morning a fierce storm was raging. As I dropped our children off at school, I noticed the neon petrol sign indicating that the tank was empty. I am aware that the car indicator flashes a number of miles before it is truly empty. But I also recalled that it has already flashed its warning sign the day before and I had “conveniently” forgotten to attend to it. Who knew how much more petrol was in the tank? I could risk driving back without attending to it again, hoping and praying I would make it home safely. But that would be risky. It would be avoiding my fear. And it would prevent me learning a new skill. I swallowed hard and drove into the petrol station. With my husband on the phone talking me through the coding procedure, I managed to fill her up. All by myself. Victory! Or so I thought. Until I drove away and the petrol gauge still showed empty! Calling my (very patient) husband again, I explained the issue. He tried to convince me to risk driving back home so he could resume his old role of saviour and hero. But though this was “oh so tempting”, and I did not relish standing outside in the rainstorm again, a little voice inside me advised me to follow through. I summoned my last vestiges of courage and my meagre language skills. My senses were screaming for me to escape. I tried to ignore them. My intellect was screaming for me to retreat. I tried to distract it. My spirit was yearning for me to stop and pray. I tried to coax it. My legs marched to their own surprisingly stubborn beat. And took me back to the hardware store. In response to my plea, a shop assistant came out to the pump with me. He indicated that the pump was working fine and I should not have a problem. So I tried again. And again I noticed that the gauge stubbornly remained on empty! Finally, I noticed a capable-looking older man and asked him in my broken Hebrew if anything was wrong with the pump. Three other women had filled their tanks in the meantime and they had all driven away satisfied. Maybe it was my car? Or me? The older man’s kind eyes and patient demeanor reassured me. He walked over to my car, borrowed my electronic coding device and proceeded to fill her up properly. I watched him closely. “Why did it work for you and not me?” I asked in exasperation. A typical Israeli shrug and a brief “it just does that sometimes” was his answer. Oh. I drove away from the petrol station, now armed with the experience of having filled up my car with petrol in a foreign country. A small smile stole over my tightened lips. Like sunshine breaking through the clouds. I had done it! Perhaps this was a glimpse, just a glimpse of the secret emuna ticket hidden in born and bred Israeli pockets. The secret of the sabras. They do not give up. They do not back down. They face their fears head on. And with their courage, they maintain daily victories. With the word “glimpse” on my lips, I glanced up at the cloud-darkened sky. And then I saw it. My first rainbow since making Aliyah. Faint and ephemeral, it was a sign nonetheless. Like Hashem’s message of reassurance to Noach that his challenge had finally abated, I felt that his Heaven-sent, colourful arc had an uncomplicated coding system containing a message just for me. —Chaiya D.
Déjà Vu
Moving in both directions, time loses its footing—takes the mind to its edge—
In these moments without boundary mud and chains become illusion, but the butterfly remains real. —Cynthia Weber Nankee
SO MANY NAMES
Name me your face And I’ll match it To the faces of other names Spelled the same Like a friend Whose name you share And lives again Each day I greet you.
Nameless faces too, Each time I pass by you On the corner, You look more like A name I think I know, Yet could not.
So many lives repeat with each Repeating name or face In my coincidental life. —Don Segal
THANK YOU DEAR LORD
How is it possible to thank you Dear Lord for the kindness of your ways
You have answered my deepest prayers You have hearkened to the longings of my heart
How long have I waited— the hours, the days the weeks, the months the years— All seemed endless
Yet always I knew I knew that you were waiting, too, waiting with me
Thank you. —Simcha Angel
NOtes For Poem On Coincidence
Two lines moving at random across a plane. Two lines nearing, intersecting. Did the pen decide. Did a mind behind the pen tire of so much blank space, so much drift, and force a resolution.
What the source of such meetings of line and color in canvas after canvas attended by Pollock. Was it loose cannon of brush or the time of day or some primordial visitation from so far down not even the artist knew.
The inner seas of space and time. The site of their surfacing.
Cousinage of chance and coincidence or only difference.
Think Thomas Hardy: “—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . “Hap”
Tight webbing of space-time—what then any claim of a moral dimension in whatever joining. What symbolism possible in idea of syzygy.
The Titanic. Iceberg and ship as near perfect tokens of coincidence.
Oedipus. The famous/infamous meeting of son and father at the crossroads. Mere chance or fate. The play decides.
Two strangers casting glances in the Metro, become lovers for the journey ahead.
Secular space and time. Sacred space and time. How to relate coincidence to one or both.
Perhaps a poem to begin and end in questioning, No telos driving to a certainty. --Doug Bolling HEXAGONAL BRICKS
They are tearing up the sidewalks on the Wagon Path in the Nachalim neighborhood, replacing the hexagonal bricks with the ordinary oblong kind. I don’t know if anyone else will miss them. But to me they were like the signature of this place, and like something that said to me, “You belong here.” I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a place where it seemed as if you were specifically meant to live. It had happened to me twice before. The first time was in Seattle, in late winter 1971, when I was about to have what a native American might have called my power vision. I had found a copy of Black Elk Speaks in a commune house, where I stayed on first coming to the city. But at that point I felt there was something I must go through by myself. So I found a one-room apartment in a beautiful old white frame house across a wide intersection from the commune house. This closeness to and distance from the commune house helped inspire a story called “The Island Castle,” which still shines for me with the radiance of that first breakthrough. The second time was in 1973. Back in my home city —Madison, Wisconsin—I decided to rent an apartment in the center of town, in the area around the state capitol building, where all the streets except University Avenue and State Street are named for the signers of the Constitution. In the second or third apartment I looked at, the front wall of the main room was bowed out, so that the room had the shape of an irregular hexagon. That shape spoke to me; at that time I went by the name of Bea (one syllable) and the associations of the creature that builds hexagonal cells—a time-honored symbol of poetry and community—had been brought home to me. Also, the digits of the house number—419—added to 14, the number of lines in the sonnet; also, my maternal and paternal grandmothers were born on February 14th and July 14th respectively. And finally, the house was the last homely house on a commercial block between University Avenue and State Street. This inspired an essay called “Between University and State,” announcing the founding of a poetic academy, which, alas, did not eventuate. In the 1980’s, privileged to live in that most symbolic city, Jerusalem, I made another start at the poetic academy. It flopped again, but the idea kept coming back. In 1993, when I was back in the States, it took the form of a longish poem entitled “The Hexagon” where the vision is mapped onto a building of that shape. By that time I’d noticed that the hexagon is also the central portion of the Star of David, and if the six points stand for six weekdays then the hexagon stands for the Sabbath. In 1998 I wrote a pamphlet in hopes of recruiting the artistic community to actually build the thing. Six months later, some mogul gave a huge grant for an arts center, which was unfortunately wasted on the construction of a glitzy showplace. Maybe once the Temple is up, Maschiach will order a Hexagon to be built somewhere in the vicinity? Or maybe it was just the fantasy of a poet on her way to becoming Jewish and, once there, unable to give up her personal jookim, as sabras say. But then why all the “signs?” “The way a person wants to go is the way one is led,” a rabbi warned me in 1979. But perhaps, pending the arrival of great miracles, these things at least show that there is something more to the world than material relations… After returning to Israel in 2013, I rented for a while in Maale Adumim, across the wadi from Jerusalem. Some friends advised me to go on renting, but NechamaSaraGila Nadborny-Burgeman, of The Twelve Dimensions of Israel fame, was very clear about the spiritual importance of owning real estate in the Land of Israel. One day I visited an artist who lives on the Wagon Path in Nachalim. The Nachalim neighborhood is imaginatively laid out, with arches and passageways and pedestrian paths, so that it does seem a little like one big—hive. Though less than 40 years old, the place has acquired a certain patina, i.e. it is a bit dilapidated. But that’s what we used to call “funky” in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, and I guess some of my aesthetic still derives from that period. I thought: “I could live here.” Three weeks after that visit, I suddenly felt that I HAD to buy an apartment, NOW. I went to the realtor down the street who said, “I have a beautiful apartment for you!” It was in the Kley Shir neighborhood, adjacent to Nachalim and architecturally continuous with it. And of course Kley Shir—where the streets are named for Biblical musical instruments—would be an appropriate address for a poet. The number on the door of the apartment was 18 (I was born on the 18th of Elul), although the apartment across the hall was #3. It had a balcony, and windows both east and west. Something said to me: “You won’t find anything better.” It turned out that the previous owner of the apartment had a close connection with the person I had visited three weeks earlier. Walking from my new home to the mall by way of the Wagon Path, I noticed the hexagonal bricks. The other day, seeing them piled up waiting to be carted off, I asked the workers (to their amusement) if I could take one brick home. I put it on the counter in my kitchen. It isn’t exactly decorative, but I wanted it as concrete evidence. Of a sign once given, whatever it may have meant. —E. Kam-Ron
THEY OFFERED ME LOTS OF MOVIES
Sometimes I try to guess the text I’ve stumbled into To insinuate my own text And once—in a rare hour of courage—I tried to write it
Now in the dark theater I just smile to myself At each collision, even if painful, between what is done and what is heard. —Ruth Blumert tr. E. Kam-Ron
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