The Meditation Of Travel
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.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
