GARDENING TESHUVA

By Yael Tzipporah Sanders

What divine mitzvah I fulfilled

when I spit the aveira and watched it disappear

in a thicket of fennel.

What dirt I secreted,

loves I cheated,

lies I deleted.

And now all the rainy season I'll watch them come up flowers,

their purple petals barely flushed with sin.

The lies will die

as the truths begin

to face the sun.

And the process photosynthesis

completes exegesis

and starts great teshuva.

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After eating traif

I went to an Israeli midrasha in the country

to learn about the pintele yid in me,

that has nagged at me throughout my life.

I learned

that if you fill a bucket with vegetal scraps

and turn it,

it becomes the most beautiful earth

but if you place in it

one piece of meat,

the whole becomes infested

with ants

and they destroy it.

So I keep my sanctity.

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There are sparks in mud.

Sparks that are deep-lodged in thick dirty mud.

Sparks that you cannot get to

without getting dirty.

So I got myself dirty.

I went into mud, I tramped into mud,

I dug into mud, I sank into mud,

and I came out with a spark,

and held it high above my head,

like a baby bringing a single dandelion to her mother

I carried the spark to God.

I held it up to God.

I said: for this I put myself into mud!