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Poetry Oct 2006

 

Beloved

 by

Maria Pollack

 

Hannah Jewel
1873 - 1961
 
Beloved
A crumbling, moss-covered stone attests.
 
But whom did Hannah love?
 
Was there someone she was forever missing
Whose name she always heard whispered
By the breezes, brushing back her hair from her forehead, on warm spring days?
 
Were there nights when she wanted to never see morning
To sleep forever in dreamlessness rather than to wake to strident yearnings
Bold as tiger lilies blossoming, along a dusty road, defiant in the withering summer heat?
 
For her, when autumn came was there still no reprieve
From desires that burned as fiery-orange as the leaves
Drifting down from the ancient sugar maples in her yard?
 
On winter mornings, when she lifted her face, slapped and chastened by the cold,
To be touched by lazy swirling snowflakes,
Would she close her eyes and imagine a life she could never have?
 
Did she, crossing her arms in negation of the priest's sermon,
Believe the Book of Ecclesiastes to be a tractate of lies
In claiming that to everything there was a season--a time for sowing, another for reaping--
When her own heart sorely knew some things never perish even in flood or fire?
 
Or was Hannah Jewel’s life different than mine?
 

 
Bio:Maria Pollack has had her work published in The Detroit Jewish News, The Little Magazine, The Loyalhanna Review, Wings, Quantum Tao, Art Times, Urban Desires, Lily, The Angler, The Green Silk Journal- A short story"Cheating Hearts"-see our May issue, The Oregon Literary Review, The Picolata Review, Word Riot, and The Ghost in the Gazebo:  An Anthology of New England Ghost Stories.  She lives in upstate New York.