My Californian Sukkah down below is filled with youthful voices, <br />while I up here watch shimmering olive leaves and lie <br />basking in diaspora sun <br />reading about my grandfathers: <br />prisoners of the Pale, the pious, <br />Cabbalists, Maskilim, Bundists, <br />Capitalists, Zionists, dreamers, <br />Kibbutzniks, fighters, well-diggers, <br />wishful-thinkers. <br /> <br />My sons and daughters downstairs with their eager voices <br />approach my impasse as I must have done, <br />as once my grandparents set their sights on Zion, <br />forsaking history and prayer, taking up arms and hoes, <br />tools of head and hand, <br />purse and persuasion, hearts hardened to their foes, <br />with Jews’ determination, <br />calling it miracles. <br /> <br />LRH <br />10.9.06 Ch. H’M Sukkot.<br /><br />Linda Hepner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ancestral-voices/
