High Holidays

By DON SHARE

Rabbit fur and hair strewn through the lawns
of the Midwest!
The famous feral parakeets of Chicago
are chattering
With cold. I want to drown myself
out with the roar
Of the greenish river that slices my city
into two.
Nothing pertains, if that’s the right word,
to what I’m hearing:
Little kids singing Benjamin Britten’s
Ceremony of Carols or, if only
In my mind’s ear, what I’m able to recall
of the Kol Nidre:
Rushing over the notes, as if in an unearthly
hurry to get someplace.

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry. His books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and most recently a new book of poems, Wishbone (Black Sparrow) and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions, a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year.

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