We Are the Magicians

We are the magicians
it is more than staff into snake we seek.

We dream a sentence into life.

We must.

We are skilled in the kitchen
of language and longing
baking leftover letters
into nourishment
for our hungry.

Miriam you are our finest
patchwork kittel
dusty scraps from history’s cutting floor
silk like grandmother’s lips
and new truths ablaze
with laughing
and the murmur of girls
studying Talmud and dance.

Miriam we kiss your fringes
gulp down the water
we bless with your name.

Miriam, on this night we are free
Five thousand years of desert
and now everywhere wells.

From A Night of Questions: A Passover Haggadah edited by Rabbi Joy Levitt and Rabbi Michael Strassfeld (Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: The Reconstructionist Press, 1999) 1-877-JRF-PUBS

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