Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Pamela Wax is a rabbi, and poet, and a philosopher, as her poem "What does it say about me" demonstrates.
"What does it say about me"
that, when asked about rock
as a metaphor for God --
Rock of Ages, Rock of Israel,
my Rock and my Redeemer, my Rock
in Whom there is no wrong --
I try to think of God
as one of the smooth, pastel
beach stones I haul in my car to leave
on the graves of my loyal
dead, or as the Vishnu schist
of the Grand Canyon, catching
light and color when sun rises
or turns in for the night,
or as the red rock of Zion, oxidized
and bloody, because bloodshed
is relentless --
but I can't.
I'm partial to dead trees,
not the ones leafless
in winter, sure to revive
in spring, but those hollowed out,
skeletal and grayed.
I've taken hundreds of photos
of their spindly arms reaching
toward me like an arborescent
angel of death. Chancing
on one so mortal in the woods
can bring me to prayer,
gulping for breath.
God for me is the fleeting,
not the forever. I am of the nature
to die, one of the five Zen gospels I pocket
for plain truth and honest reporting
as my body sags with its expenditures
and investments, trying to purchase
wisdom hard as oak and bone.
