Passing Over

Not cruel, April. Not to me. The scent of hyacinths from the flower shops makes my head spin. The croci have come and gone, but, everywhere, daffodils. No sadness in new growth, no pain. Eliot hyperbolized. But what of that? It is April. The temperature has broken seventy degrees several times in the past week. The insanity in Washington continues. The terrible, terrible war goes on. But I sense promise in each new leaf

.

Today is the second day of Passover. Today is Good Friday. I had matzoh with melted cheese for breakfast and matzoh ball soup for lunch. Yearly treats. Even this confluence of holidays feels promising to me. Instead of the brutality of murder, the brutality of crucifixion, I consider rebirth and renewal.

More than twenty years ago I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. It is Christianity’s holiest site, marking both the supposed site of the crucifixion and burial place of Jesus. I found it fascinating in terms of the history of the various religious sects and their relationship to the building, and in learning about burial rituals at the time of the beginning of the Christian era, and in the profound solemnity of the visitors. It was an opening into a faith that, otherwise, mostly eludes me. But so does Jerusalem which, for me, unfortunately, gives off a theme park vibe.

My birthday falls in April. It’s kind of cool that we choose to mark the inevitability of aging with a celebration to commemorate the moment of our birth. We sing songs, light candles, get gifts and have a day that is special just for us. How great is that? Happy to be here.

Starting with the second day of Passover, today as it turns out, Jews begin counting the Omer, the days between Passover and Shavuot. Not surprisingly, this counting started as yet another, harvest ritual and then aligned with a religious observance. Shavuot marks the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. Yes, I am oversimplifying a bit here. But it’s a big deal in the way all of these biblical metaphoric events are big deals. Parenthetically, I am certain that Trump is either ignorant of or profoundly indifferent to these. However, by the time Shavuot arrives this year, spring will be in full bloom, and, with a lot of luck, the world will be more peaceful.

Meantime, April is Poetry Month! I didn’t know there was a poetry month until I began seriously writing poetry back in the 1990’s. But, since then, I have embraced the month whole heartedly. This year, my goal is to write a poem each day of April and send out a submission to a journal each day. I will also be reading as many poetry collections as I can. I strongly recommend Baron Worsmer’s final collection, James Baldwin Smoking a Cigarette and Other Poems, or any of his other books. His death, earlier this year, is a tremendous loss for poetry and poets.

I will be reading for poetry month at the Third Annual Garwood Poetry Festival, the Crossroads, 78 North Avenue, Garwood, NJ, 2pm-4pm. It would be delightful to see you there, and I will close with a late pandemic /Omer poem of my own:

Counting

the Omer, the days between
Passover and Shavuot
between physical redemption
and spiritual redemption
the days until my birthday
the days between my birthday
and what would have been
my wedding anniversary
the days spent in quarantine
the days until the quarantine ends
the number of confirmed cases
the number of dead
Seder means order
not meal
not feast
the order of the service
the washing of hands
drinking of wine
the order in which people I knew died
the breaking of the middle matzah
their names
telling the story of the Exodus
their underlying conditions
spilling the wine
how long we have been
the washing of hands
singing of songs
apart