i do not beseech my soul for healing healing is a mask that separates the old from the new and there is nothing that has happened to me that isn’t still happening no i stand (T)here today to beseech my soul for feeling and i wail! (for the unspent hour in the unspent life for spending time … Continue reading “if we are to sing, let us sing to lives of feeling…”
Avinu Malkeinu: Petition for New Loyalities
avinu malkeinu lo/low named and nameless name avinu malkeinu who has looked away avinu malkeinu who does not answer avinu malkeinu who gives charitably but without justice not once in kind avinu malkeinu who did not will not and cannot save us avinu malkeinu who is no father ours or mine your name is as … Continue reading Avinu Malkeinu: Petition for New Loyalities
Devon Opens Toronto Lights4Liberty Migrant Freedom Rally
I spent the hour before Shabbat gathering with transmitters of multi-faith migrant justice at the Lights for Liberty: Toronto, Canada vigil. Though I left shortly after my remarks to light candles and welcome Shabbat, it felt necessary to be there in loving affirmation of the strangers caged in camps across the United States and, too, … Continue reading Devon Opens Toronto Lights4Liberty Migrant Freedom Rally
Devon’s work featured in Bestselling Ben Yehuda Press anthology on new approaches to Jewish healing and grieving
cereus: poem for the New Year
my religion is not outrage but the flower that blooms in the wintertime knowing that all distance and disdain are a passing and that night gives birth to us in the presence of stars.
shaarei tefilah or why we ought to turn away from the gates
open yourself to all the ways you are closed for the gates only tremble when you close yourself to all the ways you believe you are open. give to others by refusing to give of yourself, for the gates only part when you quiet yourself to receive the expressed need of another and at last, … Continue reading shaarei tefilah or why we ought to turn away from the gates
who knew? (9/11/18)
who knew we were standing in the shadow of buildings this whole time some of us even forgot the sky. how remembrance must be earthly straight there in front of us and yet, heaven-facing, always beyond us.
how the earth became a home
i was taught to bend like a reed but was planted here, stiff and unmoved like a cedar and from this slanted soul, jewish worlds did split pulling all the inhabitants, unbearably, apart until all that was left was the destruction and the moaning. but then, in came beauty that withstood being ugly and from … Continue reading how the earth became a home
battlefields
the trenches were empty now and between loss and limb, an otherworldly whisper- “the warzone you have been fighting in is, willfully, a pasture” and from the blood-soaked battlefield, plants enough to outlive even death.
love on the edge of stones and bitterness
Love is not the possession of commandments stone Or a lover's banner dangling pleasingly upon the skin But, the moment after the last song is sung and all the wine has all been drunk. When only woundedness And the revelation of a prolonged aching keep us company. Love lives here. Unmasking and detaching And for … Continue reading love on the edge of stones and bitterness
Devon Spier 