This Too, Capricious
by Terry E. Hill
Pesach fell on Friday with apples and figs, matzo balls,
candles in Southern Baptist candlesticks, charoset on bread.
The two of us say a single Baruch and drink Shiraz.
Nothing bitter.
Instead of nasty and short we get lengthy and kind.
The god of fortune who toys absently with her creatures lets us linger
this oasis in time, interlude unbidden and unearned.
Apples and figs, bread and soup, candles, Shiraz,
it’s spring, the water pitcher full, wine cups replenished,
Miriam with timbrels is dancing, waves in her long loose hair.
No bitterness,
the sacrifice and suffering elsewhere, outside this circle,
the god of fortune toys with her dinner but passes over us,
a lifetime’s length of improbability.
Pesach on Good Friday, go figure, charoset on bread,
my mother’s silver candlesticks.
What commandments do we follow, what covenant, with whom?
Good fortune endures and troubles us, such happy favor
while God smote the Egyptians, the Romans smote the Jews,
plague came to Venice and brutish nobles ran amok.
Seriously, for centuries.
Fear and danger, poor and nasty persist,
but in this house no bitterness, affliction, fire or flood.
The circle shared, not solitary.
Apples, figs, bread soup Shiraz
and the unfading green vine that fringes Miriam’s tall cup,
tremulous in candlelight and incantation, pious and profane.
Baruch atah, Adonai.
Terry E. Hill is a physician in Oakland, California, with a long history of publishing in healthcare and a more recent history in literature, e.g., in The Healing Muse and the All Shall Be Well Anthology. He grew up in rural Georgia but earned his B.A. in literature from Reed College.
