Poem: Climbing

This morning,

in the small basement shul,

amidst several Chassidic students lost in prayer,

I looked up from my siddur

to see a man in worker’s clothes climb a ladder

and enter through an open ceiling panel.

And I thought, Oh yes,

he is just another one

like all of us

trying desperately to ascend,

but knowing full well he must come back down

to perform the work of this earth.

“Climbing” first appeared in Midstream.

Yehoshua November is the author of “God’s Optimism,” which was named a finalist for the 2010 L.A. Times Book Prize in Poetry. He teaches writing at Touro College and Rutgers University.