Tree of Life
Kaddish for Jerry Rabinowitz
It’s a form of praying,
to hold the darkness inside yourself
and embrace it
the way you would hold water
in a flowing river.
To wake up
with tears flowing from a dream
your face a field
of milkweed
as the pods scatter
in a wind of prayer
embracing the growing cold.
I remember where he sat
by the window
at the bottom of the flood plain
where the rivers emptied
into the streets that afternoon.
Fire trucks creating a wake
as they moved through the water.
And when the bullets came
he ran toward the shattering souls,
following his instincts
always to help,
to heal the wounded
and the dying.
His friends
hold each other
reaching out through time
and a dark river –
holding seeds planted long ago
by the Tree of Life,
say Kaddish in front of an open
Ark of the Covenant.
He would want you to find your light
and embrace it again,
to walk back into the forest
we call the world.
Hold his memory
the way you would hold his face.
Let his voice ripple
through time.
Where the trunk of a redwood tree
thick with the rings of centuries
was burned by lightning,
shine your light
into the dark world.
— Diane Frank
