sometimes poems help me figure out things I am trying to figure out.

Poem for Erev Yom Kippur 5770

Sourly to penance slumps my soul in autumn.
All year I've shut the call to benediction out
my lips too parsimonious a purse for prayer.
But uncouth on the street I watch my books for signs
no earthly book could hold-
embossed, the solemn hours of my life.

Only when the call to prayer
fills the unceremonied air
we come; the mournful warble
of church bells, and the thin, stalwart voice of the muezzin;
even we Jews have conceived a siren
to yowl the Sabbath into streets filled with the unfaithful.

Dear faith, dear faith I hold fast even now
a book with pages whiter than the robe
my father wears to show the Heavenly Host
a heart pure of misdeeds,
how can I find my soul in a room
when even now under ancient songs
propelled by current tongues I hear
the sun hum down the horizion spilling out
in all plumed gaiety more light
than could fill the arch and eaves of holy rooms,
so crisp and fine in the last days of September
each stone could uncurl into a naked diamond,
each ridge of the river flares like a cup of gold?