Rosh Hodesh Heshvan
The Month Without a Festival
After Tishrei,
the doors close softly.
The shofar sleeps
in its case.
The white cloth is folded.
The sukkah comes down
from the sky,
leaving the yard
full of nails and shadow.
No trumpet calls us.
No appointed joy
lifts its cup.
Only the moon,
vanishing into herself,
and the unfinished work
of being human.
Heshvan.
The month of rain
not yet fallen.
Once called Bul,
when the plow broke earth
and the fields lay open
to whatever heaven
would give.
Once, the deep broke open.
Water swallowed the mountains.
Yet in this same month
a Temple stood completed.
Its stones were fitted.
Its doors were hung.
Yet no voices filled its rooms.
A place can be ready
long before anyone
comes home.
The last pilgrims
were given time
to reach their homes
before the prayer for rain.
The waiting
for one another.
Then:
Give us rain
for blessing.
Rain that enters the furrow,
darkens the seed,
finds its way through stone
to the hidden root.
Perhaps that is why I think of Ruth,
walking beside Naomi
toward a country
without a promise.
She carries no harvest,
only her loyalty,
and the courage to enter
a field where she is not yet known.
And then Roza,
behind the wire at Auschwitz,
passing grams of gunpowder
from hand to hand.
Each gram could cost her life.
Each small defiance
returned something
they had tried to take.
What is it
we carry
when the future gives us
no clear shelter?
Outside my window,
the hopseed hedge
bows nearly to the ground.
The wind comes down
from the Santa Ritas,
rattling dry mesquite pods.
The saguaro stands
with weathered arms
raised against the sky.
The wind has no opinion
about courage.
It simply passes through,
testing what can bend
and what must remain.
I remember
the first day of school.
New shoes.
A stiff collar.
Clothes not yet
belonging to me.
I, too, was sent
into a place I did not know,
carrying only what had been
fastened onto my body
and the hope that someone
would show me where to stand.
Years later,
my children’s shoes
lined up by the door.
Each of us dressed
for a life
we could not see.
The house held us
for a moment,
then opened its door
to the waiting world.
Heshvan,
you arrive
without ceremony.
Yesterday,
curtains of virga
hung above the Santa Ritas,
rain falling
but never reaching
the earth.
The hopseed bowed
beneath the wind.
The saguaro stood.
Then, in the deep dark
of the new moon,
thunder moved
among the mountains.
The rain found
the roof,
and afterward,
the earth.
May there be an hour
in which nothing
is required
of anyone.
Let the gravel darken.
Let the mesquite drink.
Somewhere beneath
the desert’s hard crust,
a seed receives
the first drop.
And somewhere,
a newly carved sanctuary
stands ready.
Its door opens
not to bar the storm,
but to receive
all who have waited
for shelter.
May the rain find
what thirsts.
May all that has been closed
remember how to open.
May we enter the season
as we are,
and be received
