A Jewish New Year’s Card                                       

Summery exaltation or summary execution? The more-than-august judgments have been handed down in silence, without our ever guessing what’s in store.

 

And so we stumble on, confessing this or that, while deep inside, the physical brain is heedless, independent, its tiny networks firing with a pleasing ping.

 

What it knows is hardly knowing as we know it. Instead, a fibrous circuitry hums on, which, subtracting the persona that emerged through countless eons,

 

might selflessly look upwards unencumbered. Then what is it that we think we are requesting?

 

Only that the act of bowing down might summon up a truer way of being, once a year, adverting to this microscopic void.

 

Go ahead, it says, admit it! Bit by bit, the most that can be gathered is that, like a giant billboard

 

just above “This Space for Rent,” for now is ours.

 

So, write us down for life! Renew the lease! From deep inside,

 

the thanks that’s ours can never seem enough.

 

Yours truly, a litany that’s endlessly repeated, begun now once again, we hope. Amen.

 

James Kugel