Day 14

Today I read some poems from the first issue of The Jewish Poets Collective Journal, including this one with the perfect title for today.

Heidi Joffe

ESTHER’S STORY/PURIM, MARCH 2025

Under a full blood moon,
the sea chops against the lost
logs and boulders—its hackles
raised in fury,
but the wind rides its back
like a school of sharks surfing
to shore, hungry and devouring,
ready to snap me in
serrated rows of teeth,
crack my back.

A small boat totters through these waves
towing a goddess toward her home,
or that’s what I see, sitting here,
her round hips, her lips
salt stung as she moves towards
a lighthouse, and open sea.

My walk wrought from the light,
below these melting mountains:
if nothing else, I will become sea
water, shark food carried
on a dais…not gold, but red cedar,
hollowed for my obsidian heft, ruby
lips and diamond heart, my eyes
the abyss of onyx or jet, funeral
stones and a trident hat set askew,
poppy seeds caught in my toothy trap.