May the whale stay still as we pause the boat to remove the net. May the net find its burial in smoke or fire. May fire be modest and rise from the field to release seeds that have been forgotten. Let them explode outwards, theirs is a harsh birth. Let summer pause until its offspring find the grandfather tree, prepared by ants, guardians of blind passage in the ground. Let the ground rest, there is more corn than the animals can eat, and earth is a riddle that repeats itself. Let the dove with its white belly remain ignorant of my bedroom. For there are those who are afraid, and don’t we all depend on a nest. Even the wind, which circles the wide open spaces, and loves the grass as much as the airborne, and sighs and settles there.
Jane Medved is the author of Deep Calls To Deep (winner of the Many Voices Project, New Rivers Press) and the chapbook Olam, Shana, Nefesh (Finishing Line Press) Recent essays and poems have appeared in Ruminate, The North American Review, The Cider Press Review, The Normal School, and The Seneca Review. She is the poetry editor of the Ilanot Review, and a visiting lecturer in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv.
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