Dorothy Field

Passage

a film by Renee Poisson

Poetry by Dorothy Field

All these poems are from WEARING MY PEOPLE LIKE A SHAWL, Sono Nis Press, Box 160, Winlaw, BC. Many thanks to Diane Morriss for permission to publish them on the web.

Homing

Is home the lilt of clouds, mist of gnats,

the rasp of oak bark, the gusting passage

from here to wherever, lightning’s fork, sun’s sizzle,

the hiss of hail, which is our sky bath, our reaching across to

everything we want and fear we’ll never have?

Long lists of expulsions carried in my cells. Could I

tend the grief, lay down my pack, call this place

home? Cease wandering. Is this how we make it

ours, how we home ourselves on this vital and terrible,

harsh and tender earth?

I Wasn’t There

when Cossacks raged the Ukraine, ransacked

Medzhybizh, my family huddled

below the floor, not breathing.

When her father made my grandmother, smart but ugly,

marry a stupid man, a butcher – divorced him

fifty years later, in America. I wasn’t

there when my other grandmother told a Viennese nun:

My children will not say those words,

so the nun prefaced prayers: Birnbaum children,

Out, or when the tsar’s army swept through Ulanov, her Polish

shtetl, dragging off the young men, and they wouldn’t give up

one of theirs. I wasn’t there when

my mother’s great-grandfather packed a bundle of clothes,

sailed the Rhine through Bavaria, across the sea,

up the Alabama to Montgomery where he drove

his mule and wagon, dirty Jew peddler, or

when her other great-grandfather, just thirteen, booked passage

Mannheim-New York, worked for a pipe maker,

fine burls, meerschaums, lower Manhattan, bought

the business. All I have is

what they carried. Brass mortar and pestle. Silver

napkin ring. Their cadence: arrogant Yekkies,

Russian/Polish greenhorns. Their blood.

Their refusal to bow. 

We are all of us

secret Jews: the shoe man in Albuquerque

who’s great great great came with Don Juan de Onate,

A Jew, he said, though he wouldn’t have told me

a decade ago. The carver of elk bone saints, a Jew,

roots in New Mexican pueblos and Spain.

Each of us has secrets: your grandmother’s blood,

her Métis mother, your father’s name

before he changed it, your sister

really your mother, the uncle in South America

actually in jail, the bastard child, the suicide,

the cousin with AIDS, the schizophrenic,

the addict roaming downtown streets.

And me, my own hidden Jew, inner scapegoat,

the horns below my curls, my sharp tongue,

pointing finger, the cheap one, the critical one,

the one who’s never satisfied, my long sojourn

with disowned grief, my inner settler,

my secret terrorist, my ennui, my hopelessness.

Shame on my tongue, the hair on my head,

the thinness of my skin, my quicksilver

thought, my lush belly hips thighs.

I ready myself for my coming of age,

wine-red dress, glittery shawl, my orphaned self

on my arm, inviting her

to the feast.

Muskwa-Kechika Dayenu

If we had flown twisted silver rivers

into the Mayfield Lake

but not seen moose haunch echo

mountain slant…

Dayenu

If we had heard the moose’s four foot plod

plashing the lake

but not seen the knot of loons…

Dayenu

If we had heard loons finishing each other’s thoughts

but not caught kingfisher rattle…

Dayenu

If we had seen kingfisher flush sandpipers

but not watched them rise like stunt pilots…

Dayenu

If we had watched sandpipers’ orange feet

paddle the sky

but not walked the Gataga for the horses

brown  bay  paint……

Dayenu

If we’d seen the weeping hole in the mare’s flank

begin to heal

but not walked the burn…

Dayenu

If we had drunk the spired beauty

of the burn, dark spars on light sky

but not seen upstart leaves greening black soil…

Dayenu

But we did, we entered…

Dayenu

Note: Dayenu (pronounced Die-A-New), Hebrew meaning “It would have been enough”, a Passover song of gratitude more than a thousand years old.

Muskwa-Kechika – region of northern British Columbia named for two watersheds, the

largest pristine area of the entire Rockies chain.

The Earth My Mezuzah

                - After W.S. Merwin

By deer tracks in red soil

We are saying thank you

In stream crook and creek trickle

By desert’s dazzling green   first rain in fifteen years

In skink slide and hare’s breath

We are saying thank you

By split bark and sweet gum

In hummingbird hover and woodpecker drill

In bat dart and bat smoke

We are saying thank you

On ochre mesa down umber wash in ruddy pan

By bluebird flash under damp wind in light’s last river

We are saying thank you thank you

Beside horsetails speaking silica and sand

In taffy pull sky under raven drift and raven gargle

Below oak snarl and cottonwood snow

In the slow stretch of yucca bloom

We are saying thank you

In cactus thorn and cactus flower

In soft drizzle and pelting hail

In our coming in and our going out

In our lying down and our rising up

We are saying thank you

In crow caw and hawk soar

In our loneliness and in our love

We are saying thank you

Without walls without roof

We are saying thank you

Breathing thank you

Kneeling thank you

Bright and dark though it is

Note: Mezuzah: a small parchment in a case attached to the door post of Jewish homes. The parchment is inscribed with texts from Deuteronomy: 

You are to place these my words upon your heart and upon your being; …

you are to teach them to your children, by speaking of them in

your sitting in your house, in your walking on the way,

in your lying-down, in your rising-up.

You are to write them upon the doorposts of your house, and on your gates…

translation by Everett Fox, THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES, Schocken Books