Thursday Short Poem: Barenblat's "Into the Earth"

For this week's Thursday Short Poem, I'm going back to Rachel Barenblat, my fellow blogger who runs Velveteen Rabbi.  This poem appeared recently at The Middlewesterner, but I suspect that there is little overlap between readers of this blog and that one.  We're a ways a way from Sukkot, but I love the imagery here, particularly in the final lines.   Stockpiling supplies of hope is what we need to do at certain seasons, I think -- I've been drawing a lot this month on what I planted over the past year.

Into the Earth

I always plant during Sukkot.
First I unearth stones, the natural crop
of New England soil, then swap in
bulbs, like oversized cloves
of garlic, pointy ends facing up

to catch the snowmelt, signal
it’s time to awake and arise
like the daughters of Jerusalem
in white May-apple dresses
dancing their way to prayer.

Everything shifts at this season.
The signs read “apples” now,
“cider,” “shallots,” not “zucchini”
or “butter and sugar corn.”
Even the trees change clothes.

I’ve worked hard to stockpile
the year’s supply of hope
safely. Birds peck kernels
from the roof of our sukkah, as if
they know where we’re headed.

Comments

[Rachel]

Thank you for reprinting this, Hugo! I'm delighted that you liked it, of course, and happy to see it get a broader audience -- I agree that your blog and Tom's blog probably don't have much audience overlap, besides me. *g*

I smiled when I saw your note that we're a ways from Sukkot -- that struck me, too, when Tom decided to publish the poem this month. (Reading it now is like tasting an autumn flavor out-of-season -- delicious, but a little startling.) But I'm glad you think the final stanza resonates at any time of year -- sounds like you "got" the poem the way I hoped people would.