Just as the souls
departed my body
while I lay by you,
it bleeds, staccato,
on the desert:
Almost stream, almost
tributary, almost union.
Now when I kneel
where you were,
I trace the ribs
of deceased wavelets.
I taste the flow of sand,
water-broken stones,
the swollen litanies of two
seasons apart,
your dry nectar
of plenty.
From “Dry Nectars of Plenty” (Headwaters Press, 2002), which co-won BigCitLit.com’s Chapbook contest. Baruch November founded an organization to cultivate the arts called Jewish Advocacy for Culture & Knowledge, and teaches creative writing and literature at Touro College in New York.
