A woman leaps from her seat
and bounds into the aisle,
swaying and clapping her hands over her head
to the Sephardic renditions,
oud and mandolin,
of the melodies we grew up with,
her face shiny with joy.
Not young or lithe
like girls at concerts who stand
on their seats to dance, shirts lifted
to show the flat stones of their stomachs,
the woman in the aisle
is wearing a houndstooth dress,
a little tight through the middle,
each tooth the size of a fist.
My own fountain of joy
is not spilling over,
as evidenced by my writing
this dark note on the back of the insert
in the prayer book, my hand
the only moving part of me.
What would it take to give
myself over to the holy?
I am bent not in prayer but judgment,
scribbling my small thoughts,
or not small, if I could reach down
to the core, the shame or anger
that keeps me from throwing open
the window of my life to breathe.
The woman in the aisle is not thinking
of how she appears, or if she is,
a larger, freer part lifts her high above
who do you think you are?
Maybe it has taken her whole life
to arrive here.
If she had a tambourine
she would be shaking it.
And when God opens the door
of mercy on this day of awe,
she is already halfway through.

Jacqueline Berger

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