Poem | The Season When My Life Turned
I have been the first person awake in my house
                              every morning of my life
                   (except decades ago when the babies were babies)
             and one morning on my way to make coffee
       I felt like a sleeping passenger in a car
making a wide u-turnÂ
                  because my life had invisibly changed direction;
                             I saw that in my kitchen the only things
                        that seemed a little alive
                  and whose manufacture
          had not injured any living being or the earth
                                         the only ones
          were the carved wooden spoon one daughter made in camp
dimpled just as we are
          the squat clay pitcher made by the other
                  complete with looped handle and wide enough
     to pinch the sea salt from it
                               and the sugar bowl remaining
                     from my great-grandparents’ farm in the Catskills
cream-colored circled with a broad green stripe
                 its metal cover hinged in the middle to be folded back
            as was the fashion in the mountains.Â
And after the turn
                         I stopped needing
       the kitchen to greet me in the morning as a clean slate
with everything from dinner washed and put away;
                                           now
                             when I pass the table to make coffee—
                       the morning still dark through the windows
            the Shabbat glasses with red shadows at each well’s bottom
the silverware at angles alongside the salt pitcher
            the empty can of seltzer on its side
       and the sugar bowl
open with a few spilled grains next to the box of teas—
                                I’m gladdened by this pentimento
                   of who spoke or laughed or drank
            who told the next story
                         or asked the question which then unspooled
                 our thoughts from their cupboards
            within cupboards
                 who allowed for silence—
                                       because arriving at the day
                         from this direction—
            all the sweet and salt life stirred in us—
I see it will be cleared away soon enough
Jessica Greenbaum’s most recent book of poems is Spilled and Gone. She is the coeditor of the first poetry Haggadah, the Mishkan HaSeder.
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