Swimming to Jerusalem
The first time
I went on a quest
for forbidden fruit.
The second time
I built an ark
and tried to get there by sea.
The third time
I came in search of my ancestor,
Abraham.
If the sun was hidden
I let the stars
guide me.
If the tablets were broken
I carved
new ones.
In the future
my bones
will roll to that city.
Last night
I dreamed
I was swimming there.
Howard Schwartz is the author of four books of poems, Vessels, Gathering the Sparks, Sleepwalking Beneath the Stars, and Breathing in the Dark. He is also the co-editor (with Anthony Rudolf) of Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets. His other books include Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2005, and Leaves from the Garden of Eden: One Hundred Classic Jewish Tales, published in 2008.
Howard Schwartz (St. Louis, MO)
Breathing in the Dark
Illustrations by Erica Kriss
Poetry. Paper, perfect bound, 92 pp.
$15.95 plus s&h
2011, ISBN 978-1936419-005
Also available in laminated hardcover.
$24.95 plus s&h.
Howard
Schwartz is a contemporary master of the parable, the short lyric and the tale.
In Breathing in the Dark, he has multiplied his dreams, his
myths, and his stories into poems that grow quietly and firmly from the secret
root stock of his imagination. That side of Judaism and that side of poetry
which is dream-like, mythical, and memory-ridden is Schwartz’s domain. Breathing
in the Dark is a book of human tenderness, gentle humor, and more than
a dash of mysticism. To read these poems is to enter a state of meditation in
which the two worlds of ordinary life and that of spirit are combined.
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