Toward the Torah, Soaring
Poems of the Renascence of Faith
Hardback and Paperback: 52 pp.
Published: 1998
These are ecumenical poems of spiritual awe, by a Jew who returns to his heritage and faith after having strayed for more than forty years.
Praise:
Toward the Torah, Soaring achieves its purpose in grand style. It is a refreshing blend of ancient and modern Jewish imagery that moves with ease between two worlds....It is the passionate record of a Jew who discovers his Jewish soul and cannot hold back his enthusiasm.
— Rabbi
Mark L. Shook
For Louis Daniel Brodsky writing poems is prayer. His brothers in this are Faulkner and Whitman, in whose plenitude of words we often find surprises....So it is when Brodsky writes that it is as if "matter were just a matter of adoration," that mind, heart, and God blend into "One triumphant, endless amen." He observes that "dying defying infidels / May not be faith's best way to Paradise," but he revels in "forget[ting] my skepticism." These are poems of awe and gratitude. Over and over Brodsky dares to be open and vulnerable. He trembles, knowing "God is eavesdropping on His people."...This book is an exploration of self, faith, and the religious imagination.
— Dan Jaffe, author of Round for One Voice
BUY THE BOOK from Time Being Books (the publisher) or Amazon.com.
Shabbat
The whole road owns me alone.
No one else has even entered Saturday
Or dreamed this sunny, tasseled morning into being.
I am the exiled breeze,
Widowered, childless, pariahed,
Slowing only for an occasional hamlet
Sleeping inconspicuously amidst the corn.
I am the shadow off to my right,
Running parallel, forcing the pace,
Refusing to be outdistanced or buried
Here in this vast, tractor-dappled prairie.
I am the voice Moses heard in Egypt,
Atop Mount Sinai,
And in the desert, deprived of Canaan;
Its Hebraic accent remembers my throat
From a thousand passages I've made
And commends me to its eloquent mercy.
The words that speak to me now
Are those that ordained Creation;
They sing themselves free of my imagination
Like winged hues soaring from prisms
And urge me on toward a consummation
Of the love I have for life.
Yet, as I drive, this seventh day,
My soul commands me to rest out of respect.
I obey its ancestral poetry
By changing directions, heading home to pray.
Tomorrows are my wilderness trek.
