Midrash on Falling
- Midrash on Falling
August’s intensity fools us in the city: no one thinks about what’s coming; but summer’s long light falls inside its own short night. Children run until they fall, split their skin like fat tomatoes, bleed young juice, produce scars they won’t recognize in March when blooms fall off camellias, or in May when cherry blossoms fall into confetti: apple, peach and plum petals tangle in the early grass, imitate December snow, falling over all of us who fall into a dream, from grace, in love, away from what we believe. Like rain, like fog gone liquid, dropping out of the air, all fall down. [End Page 34]
Judith Arcana’s most recent book is the poetry collection What if your mother (2005); among her prose books is Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography. Her poems, stories and essays have been published in journals and anthologies for more than thirty years. Her mother’s parents were Polish Jewish communists, her father’s were Russian Jewish socialists; she was born in Cleveland, where they sought the American dream. [visit juditharcana.com.]
