The first thing for which Jews give thanks to God
each day is for providing them with clocks.
These aren’t the ones most use. It may sound odd,
but in the past the clocks of Jews were cocks,
which still crow loud at dawn till we’re awake,
which we must be for very many reasons,
because not being woke is a mistake,
both in the summer and the winter seasons.
The sun, not clocks, determines time, and we
can’t be time’s governors, as some try now,
determining just what the time should be
in summer and in winter. Cocks know how
to tell the time the sun has set, and this
is what Jews need to know before they pray:
a good Jew in the past thus didn’t miss
this signal, telling him the time of day.
Facts like these were once great morale boosters
for every Jew, based on God’s brilliant plan
providing early risers with loud roosters
to help each one to be halakhic man,
but nowadays few people still rely
on roosters, more reliant on our phone;
its smartness is a stronger reason why
each of us rises, called by what we own,
made smart by instruments if we aren’t smart
enough to wake without their help to pray
with all our mind and soul and Jewish heart
as soon as early light turns night to day.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.