How To Birth A New Jerusalem

Rachel Emaynu, Rabaynu
Your sandals
Were made of leather and dreams
Your prayers, a macrame of tears
Your grave engraved
your name
upon our historic Return.

All because you yearned
With the rushing push of a mother in labor
Willing to die
Just as long as she birthed
new life.

For you, birth was no less than the kiss of death,
and yet, you have lent us your lesson plan
A lamaze in how to breathe our way
through the labor pain

We read your instructions like braille
For we are blind to the light.
Help us feel the formula in our fingers
as we write.

50 pages of instruction
on how to rebirth a nation.

Teach us well, for we are laboring still
For this city and this vision
Still convincing the world of our address
Still convincing our very own flesh
that this newborn Jerusalem
is ours to labor, birth and nurse

[sc name="ad-300x600"]

Let there be no more deaths in this process
Rachel, that was your last act
To die that your descendants may live
But let that not be the recipe
On this side of history

Why through war
was the Western Wall won?
And why can’t the next be done
with gentler delivery?
With reconciled wing-span
Not hate of man?

Rachel, weep through us
A new recipe
for birth in our world
A birth made with Words
Not war
Perhaps a path paved by women and girls
Not metal birds

Rachel, be reborn in us
In our mothering
and our mumblings
and our coming all the way home
To these stone-homes
tucked into streets & creases
Like notes into the Wall

Dance us in your sandals
Over smooth stone
All the way home
– To where there’s room enough for everyone