To warm ourselves before a stove
in a foreign province,
to rise early,
the wayfarer’s prayer
on our tongues,
to watch fish blaze through shallow streams
and think of home,
to shift our load from one shoulder to the next
and be reminded of the faces
of lovers that failed us
ages ago.
All these form the meditation of travel,
all these are not unlike carrying a cello
through a winter night,
the dark wood rotting
in the snow.
Yehoshua November’s work has appeared in The Sun, Provincetown Arts, Margie, and Prairie Schooner, and was selected as a finalist for the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize.
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.