Grasses

Every blade of grass has an angel bending over it saying, "Grow, grow."

Jewish wisdom from the Midrash

As summer approaches the grasses are high. We had a wonderfully wet winter in California and the spring is alive and vibrant with all sorts of plant life. Out my window are lush fig and persimmon trees, roses, rosemary and lavender bushes. I go outside and wiggle my toes in the volunteer crab grass that has taken over the back of the garden. What great good fortune to feel the land under my feet, to be free! It is in this blissful spirit that I share a poem with you.

Midmorning was written by Selma Meervaum-Eisinger and translated from the original German by Carlie Hoffman. Selma is a Jewish poet from eastern Europe. In December 1942, at the age of eighteen, she died of typhus while incarcerated in a Nazi SS forced-labor camp in Ukraine. Before her deportation, she gave her poetry manuscript to a close friend in hopes that her friend could deliver it to her boyfriend. Midmorning was written nine months before her family’s forced relocation.

Wind, dreamy notes, sings
its lullaby, gently touching the leaves.
I let myself be, seduced, immersed
in song like grass.

Air shivers
and cools my fevered face
wrapped in desire.
Clouds drift by, scatter white,
sun-stolen light.

The old acacia
leaves silence
a trembling tangle of leaves.
The scents of the earth rise, climb
and then fall back to me.

She must have felt what was coming still-her environment sustained and delighted her. In these challenging times the grasses and the seduction of the wind are available to us as well. The twelfth century Chinese Chan (Zen in Japanese) master Hongzhi Zhengjue wrote:

In wonder return to the journey, avail yourself of the path and walk ahead…With the hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace graciously share yourself.