This is a poem to be shared on Simchat Torah to encourage a spiritual deepening, a self-witnessing, and renewed faith as we are reminded to come home to our hearts.
I hold the torah scroll as it unfurls
before my eyes like the red leaves
of the burning bush in my yard, I watch
it set itself afire before it sheds
like a prayer infused with complete
faith that its leaves will come back
again, and again, and again. We return
to these stories, sometimes forgetting
that life moves in circles that expand
and contract like the heart. My heart,
your heart, one beating heart that sometimes
closes itself off to God and becomes
a fist fighting with a hunger that only
a soulless body knows how to feed.
And sometimes it opens so brightly
I could swear that I am waiting at the foot
of the mountain, my lobes that once held
its long loops of gold, bare and longing for
redemption. Forgive me, they say.
I could not hear you, they say,
I was just so scared.
What else do we have if not our hearts?
Where else could a wandering people
possibly go?
I hold these pages and tell myself to be
brave. We have witnessed the world
destroy itself again, and again. These
stories still held in our bones. My right
hand on the letter hay, my left hand
on the letter vet. When I listen closely,
I can hear them sing, In every end
is the beginning. In every beginning
is the end. Again and again. Amen.
Corie Feiner is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and an award-winning poet, performer, and educator called “wonderful” by The New York Times and “absorbing” by Backstage Magazine. Dedicated to embodied Judaism, Corie has been commissioned to perform her Jewish poetry and psalms at synagogues and for peace organizations including Tikkun, The Shalom Center, and the 92nd Street Y. She is the founder of the Bodylove Poetry Writing Workshop and the author of A Poem for Every Pose, a yoga poetry collection currently in progress. Learn more about Corie and her current projects at coriefeiner.substack.com.
