Two Poems From My Gut And More

Early this morning this came to me:

Are Those Rubber Sole Shoes?

One day my body
will fall away
like a peanut shell.
That's what I learned
in my yeshiva days.

Those were just words
and that was long before
the nut started cracking
filling with dotted lines
to tear upon.

Those were just words
spoken with no due respect
to the irrelevant piece
the unessential
the husk.

I'm 45 and it's 7:20
treadmill sweat trickles my head
I self inflict pain
because I - the rider and the horse -
I want to stay alive.


I'm in a hotel in Connecticut where I am coaching and chaperoning my school's Model UN team. Last night I had an amazing conversation with an eleventh grade boy who is super into G-d, and Torah, and Judaism the way we should be. Beli Ayin Hara this young man is amazing. While the Super Bowl played on and many kids were watching, while others sat cursing and joking about not being allowed to touch each other, all this young man wanted to do was to talk and live Torah with the greatest of joy. He told me a beautiful explanation of the Chafetz Chayim on the pasuk that says that "if you search for it like hidden treasure then you can understand fear of G-d."

Now I'm surrounded by YU advisors who are reminiscing about high school and Machach and shanah alef and their sweatshirts from those years. Funny what happens to time. When you're young, as in twenty, looking back three years is called nostalgia. Now they're talking about how "CNN was all over it" when TABC was almost disqualified from some great league because of being Shomer Shabbos. This girl's quite the story teller; “after weeks - if not months - they finally were allowed into the finals."

When someone is three inches away from me I can't help but hear (and remember) what they're saying. It's hard for me to get how people don't get that. Sigh.

Tonight's guest speaker was Francis Bok, author of Escape From Slavery. He was brought under the auspices of The David Project. He was a slave starting from age seven when he was taken from his home in Southern Sudan. He escaped when he was seventeen and tells the story in his book. He's devoted his life to educating others about the situation he went through and what continues to take place in his homeland, hoping to help. Someone from the David Project introduced him and spoke after he did. Her thesis was that there's a connection between this man's story and the fact that the genocide in that area is not noted by world leaders in civil rights and the bias of those same leaders against Israel. His words were moving and sincere. During questions and answers he was asked a cringe worthy question of who he supports for US president. He declined answering and then said something off mic to the David Project administrator and she told us that he wisely said; "I'm a survivor not a politician." The experience inspired a poem that I finished a few minutes after he finished speaking. I wrote it out on a separate sheet and gave it to him after telling him what an honor it was to see and hear him.


To Francis


You are not my esrog
You are not my bridge
You are not my spittoon
You are not my springboard

To use you to collect my points
would be to abuse you
To count on you for my advancement
would be to discount you

You are a survivor
You are an other
You are a man
You are a soul

To truly see you
would be a blessing
To place politics aside
would be to rise above.


Today I was struck by two quotes that I encountered:


1. "There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." - Alfred Korzybski,US (Polish-born) author, logician, & scientist (1879 - 1950)


2. "Do one thing every day that scares you" - Eleanor Roosevelt
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