Cloud by Day, Flame at Night
by jannie m. dresser
From where I stand in the crowd I see only
heads and worn out shoes, the backsides
of those who have gone before me wearing
apprehension like their reedy coats.
The priest chants syllables across the desert air;
so many windblown particles of coarse yellow sand.
The broken vessels are poured out and shattered.
I see only what remains of hope, watch
the sky above open with more wind.
We make our way over mountains, camels
salt-thirsty, women sticky with menses
and sweat. We journey with a God who enjoys
plodding through His timelessness, a flicker
of the Eternal gracing our tear-lashed eyes.
At times there is only a pausing; we look
into it with ordinary faces,
dip our chalice and blade.
Awakened by storm, there is a cloud
whiter than the sun, pulsing in the Tabernacle,
turning itself into a towering comet of gold.
Our animals sleep, babies do not stir;
at midnight, I can hear our breathing together:
one common prayer sung to the tune
of oases polished by winds.
Jannie M. Dresser is a Bay Area poet with San Joaquin Valley roots. In 1995 she passed her beit din with flying colors and formally became a Jew, although she had been tending that way for years. At her conversion, Rabbi Stephen Chester suggested that an important part of being a Jew was being a part of Jewish community, so her (mostly) solitary studies became a pursuit to find a home synagogue, which she found in Oakland’s Temple Sinai, where Chester is a rabbi emeritus. Dresser teaches poetry and is the co-founder and former editor and publisher of the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review. She lives in Crockett.