Got canopy and the blessing on our heads,
Sabbath down on shoulders
in white, easy feathers. Jerusalem
on fingers, and forehead,
smell Minsk in Rabbi Saul's robe.
Next year we arrive.
God loves lovers,
the apple blossoms and fruit
pushing out like babies from a scroll.
Deborah Tall
THIS WINTER
Late-moving geese cross a mackerel sky:
those clouds don ' t mean what I learned trans-Atlantic–
a sign
to
shorten sails-and on that shore
geese are happy to winter. Whatever
it means, two days later I'm stepping on
frozen puddles for the sound of breaking
and two days after that, big snow comes so
that now till May, they say, we'll see white
froqI every window, blindness adding itself
to blindness, till I can't see branches,
arbor or lake, though I know that even
the snowflower bears fruit, like water
become tea through leaves and patience,
and I can trust myself to this long steeping.
