I In My Forever Going On Poem by Shalom Freedman

I IN MY FOREVER GOING ON


I in my forever going on hear my own voice again and again
Repeating and repeating theme after theme:

“We will all die and all our loved ones be gone”
“To love here now those we love is all that we can best do”
“This little Israel surviving is still the best hope to somehow keep alive the hope of those lost in suffering in our long history”
“We may not be the last signal of the Universe but on Earth we humans are the jest and riddle the glory and the greatness of God’s universe”

The same themes,
Round and round over and over again-
As if to live were to be always returning to what we most are
And where we want to go is what we long ago knew inside as us.

I am not the man I wanted to be,
Or the writer, or the poet,
Or the great great great redeemer
Of my own father’s suffering
I did not heal the most hurt and still cannot
I did not make my way beyond what all others have written

In my own small words
After all the years
Still here
Thank G-d

I write one more poem
As if it were the first
And always
Not the last.