Poetica Magazine

BOOKENDS

by Nancy Naomi Carlson

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: bookends 

for the ten days I join the aisle of believers, 

making amends for the past year’s sins— 

each one counted, fist to chest—though flawed 

as I am with having been stiff-necked, 

succumbing to grudges, weakness of will, 

I know I will never be able to remember— 

should I live as long as Sarah— 

all my transgressions, 

planted within my body,

dormant as cancer cells hopping rides 

on vessels of blood, maybe years before 

you ever feel the main tumor 

growing, like greed, close to the heart. 

Day five’s sundown: the precise midpoint 

for these days of atonement, days of awe, 

knowing nothing lasts long in the middle— 

a space that can’t be contained as it morphs 

from what was to what will be. 

The too-cold porridge, once too-hot,

may soon end up spooned down the drain. 

Mid-phase, mid-phrase, in media res 

dazzle with their chimeric truths. 

A midsummer’s eve gradually concedes 

to the equinox, the growing chill. 

There and here: bookends, say, for a season 

of blessings, but sometimes hard 

to know if you’re halfway between 

the beginning and end until you’re there, 

just as no one living right after the fall

of Rome could define that time 

as the Middle Ages—dark, perhaps, 

but you need to know light to know dark. 

Before the first night star appears 

and the gates close as the Neilah service ends, 

when the staccato teruah of the ram’s horn sounds— 

after the moan of the tekiah, I pray 

for loved ones hovering over me, 

and pray to be sealed in the Book of Life— 

the tekiah gedolah held as breath allows.