The Tzedakah Box

By Michele Maxwell

A diverse collection of poems written as an "homage of gratitude" for 60 years of life. The poet wrote on tiny slips of paper one-word “prompts” for remembering her life’s important moments, and deposited them in a tzedakah box—a Jewish charity offering box.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982248703

Michele Maxwell

A lifelong lover and writer of poetry, she got a Master's in theology, studied playwriting at Harvard and law at University of Texas, has edited a monthly spiritual journal, “River of Light,” for 30 years, and authored “Mary, Matrix of Change,” a book about Medjugorje.

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Copyright © 2020 Michele Maxwell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Balboa Press

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-4869-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4871-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4870-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909759

Balboa Press rev. date: 07/27/2020

To all my

relations

whose memories are here recalled,

through whom God has loved me so well.

Contents

Preface

SHEMA

Part I: Sixty from the Heart

Orlando 1982

Yorkshire Rain

Inertia

Memorandum from an August Austin Firm

Compost

Malibu

Fractions

Wanting

Are You Awake?

Waiting

Speak Moses! *

Sirens

Centering Prayer

Who Made You Do It?

In the Recliner Oak

Acceptance

Sam

Summons

Mother’s Day Poem

Father’s Day Poem

Root, Hog or Die!

What to Give Up for Lent

Corpus Christi Meditation

Walking Meditation

Slaying Goliath

Near the White Wings Flour Mill: Mission Reach

Coming Up for Air

Prayer

In My Next Life…

Ash Wednesday

Apology

Truth

Maturity

Twitch

Allergy

But he realized their intentions….

September Migration

Stability

Ping ) ) ) ) ) ) )

Memorial

Scruples

The First Recovery Convention

Ordinary Time

January 1945

The March Toast

Favorite Shoes

Full Moon Last Night

To A House in Hidden Streets

That and This

Morning Prayer at South Padre Island

The Advent Sanctuary

Lenten Valentine

Eye Trouble

Rainbows Post-Supreme Court Decision

Red Oak

Six Flags vs. Disney World

Fireflies

Memory Quilts

Gym & Sauna

Cancer Industrial Complex

Part: II Sixty from the Soul

Paschal Mystery

Litany from Life

Mother Love

Christian Assistance Ministry

Mexico

Ecce Homo

Another Rain

Forbidden Pleasures

Ode to Kent Roper

Being Sick

Psychotherapy

Rosary-making: A Poem in Five Decades

Look

Christmastide with Dolly

Ministry of Courage

This Strong Levite

Camping Out

Haiku: A Waterfall

Aging BodyMind

Day Trip

Favorite Gift

Crimson Summer

Summer of 42 (Years)

Deathbed Scene

This Friday

Watercolor Prophecy

Insect Likability

Train Travel

Two Snowfalls

Best Massage

Bipolar

The Importance of Lighting

Jealousy

A Piece with a Past

Owls

Change of Life

Baker’s Dozen Catheads

Swimming Places

The Bash-All Bible Study

Three Ducks

Safety

Ireland 2014

Last Day on Wiltshire Avenue

Dog Story

Vultures

The Dark Night of Sense

That Time I Got Angry

House Renovation

Children

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Greyhound Bus

Food

Twelve-Stepping . . .

TV Interviews (1990’s)

The Hair You’d Like to Have

Falling Out with a Friend

Elementary

Grandmothers

Grandfathers

Childhood Games

Part: III Sixty from the Strength

Electronics

Daily Mass

Hawaii

Irvington

Slumber Party

She Eats Life (I)

She Eats Life (II)

A Teacher

Social Media

Cemeteries

A Face with Character

A High-Impact Work of Art

Nuns to Nones

Beach at Boca Chica

A Wild Blue Hope

South Padre Island

Halloween

Honeybees

Walking Barefoot

Falling in Love

Hoarders

The Ranch

Epiphany

A Romantic Gesture

Easter

Birthdays

The Trip

Borderlands

Three Big Formators

Tamalada

Medjugorje

Seasoned

Sleepwear

Canada

Buying a Car

Favorite Tools / Angels

The Use of Candles

The Peach-pit Incident

By the fire . . .

Booze-n-Weed

Best Friends

Card Playing

Marian Conferences

Chicago

Choosing A Christmas Tree

On the Beach

Nursing Home

The Decor of a Room

David’s Song

New York

Riverwalk

What to Save if the House Burns Down

Sexuality

Santorini

Money

Cherokee Lineage

My Catholic Devotions

Creating Art

Reading the Pee Leaves

Hindsight: 2020

About the Author

Preface

Many years ago—without knowing anything about its significance in the Jewish religious tradition—I purchased a small, elegantly carved wooden tzedakah box. I bought it simply because it was beautiful—a smooth, richly grained sphere that filled the palm of my hand, topped by a carved Star of David screw-on lid inlaid with golden Hebrew letters meaning charity, and a one-inch slot on top through which coins (or folded paper) could be inserted.

I later learned that tzedakah literally means righteousness and refers to giving charity. It is a mitzvah or commandment in Judaism—not an optional or bonus act of virtue, but an ethical obligation that is simply right and just, based on the premise that none of life’s gifts is truly ours. Rather, they all belong to God, who has entrusted them to us—and to whom we must return them through a sharing and redistribution to the world, in whatever way God wishes.

I began to fill this little wooden tzedakah box with tiny slips of paper, each containing a single word or phrase as a prompt for remembering some gifted moment or intense experience of my life. It was gradually stuffed full of over 200 slips of folded paper that became poetry prompts. Over the years I have randomly drawn out these slips of paper and written a poem for each of them, finally reaching the bottom of the small round wooden barrel on the eve of my 60th birthday.

This book holds the contents of that tzedakah box, open at last for redistributing the gifts of my life—its joys and sorrows, hits and misses—by offering them now in this form. As a sort of homage of gratitude for my sixty years, I had considered including in this collection 180 poems: three groups of sixty each. Then I happened to read that in the Jewish practice of tzedakah, charity is usually given in multiples of 18, which is the numerical value of the word LIFE in Hebrew ("chai")—with 180 considered a generous tzedakah, for it is "Ten times chai!"

I was thrilled by this little revelation—perfectly serendipitous and confirming—just like the moment-to-moment thrill of Life itself, when our eyes and ears are open. May the merit of this tzedakah be a blessing. L’chaim!

SHEMA

Hear, O Israel:

the Lord our God is One.

Love the Lord your God

with all your heart and

with all your soul and

 with all your strength.

(Deut. 6:4-9)

PART I

Sixty from the Heart

Orlando 1982

60005.png

A fishnet bag of oranges

Rocks beside us on the bus

Along with a handcarved cuckoo clock,

Your gift from me at the spelunker cave.

Rolling toward our suites, you’re wobbling

At the microphone, winking, cajoling the

Old folks, so far from their northern home

So far from the Atlantic blast of frozen factory years.

The retiring sun is unobtrusive, mild in our windshield;

They ask why we weren’t on the rooftop at dawn

To watch the spaceship ascend from the Cape.

We face each other accusingly as an old married

Couple, each proclaiming the other’s oversleep,

Not saying what rockets had launched before light,

What blastoffs and fireworks had left us gasping for breath.

How many times has your cuckoo sung out

Since that first and last meeting? How

Fluently it measures time, how persistently

I recall that in your eyes were lost

The ghosts of my dark dreams.

In three days to the surface rose the sea;

Bluest green Antibes seemed around the bend.

The sky and salty water brought our first woman, ripe with sin.

In your hair I smelled Brazilian forests

Though I had never been.

Yorkshire Rain

(or, Haworth in June)

60012.png

Sudden rumblings from the north

Fill the air with dreadful sound

In the quickly waning light

My heart leaps up and starts to pound

Fire flashes in the sky

And splits the veil of frigid doom

The wind blows wild across the moor

And whistles in my darkened room

I cast the shutters open wide

And breathe an icy blast of air

The scent of heath now fills this space

And whips the pipe smoke from my hair

I anxiously await the storm

Here far from human life in town

I gasp in awe when I behold

The first great torrent coming down

It beats against my window pane

And shakes these ancient stony eaves

It glorifies my every woe

And every blackened heart that grieves

To Penistone beyond the hill

The thunder clashes an encore

The lightning strikes a final note

Then suddenly it is no more.

Inertia

60005.png

I sit

Deliberately as a sack of flour

Spreading out against the surface

Of my seat

A lump of unrealized potential

Whiling away hour upon hour

White, bleached, drawing blanks

How I would love to be

Self-rising.

Memorandum from an

August Austin Firm

60005.png

i awake

armed less with the memory of a dream

than with the sensation of having dreamed

in that state i carry you with me through

the day—indistinct—without form

color or shape

a whisper and a shadow

of strong unnamable flavor

pungent unrecallable scent

Fully enveloped in my inner life

your memory does not invite response

or demand acknowledgement

It washes over me soothingly

in warm waves salty as tears

in elevators and coffee-filled conference rooms

i am litigious

in all but love.

Compost

60005.png

Blood-dark pungent petals

souvenir of our earliest coupling

crack in my fingers, dried and dead

And the newest addition of fallen blossoms

mingle among them in my jar, a potpourri

of wine, orange-red, yellow and pink

all picked lovingly from your final bouquet

and torn from their stems in a child’s game.

I’ll mix them with the white roses and

sweet carnations of a more persistent

love, persevering in the stormiest weather,

fleeing not because he knows too much—

knows more than I about true affection.

The whole jar’s flung wide

out the courtyard window

and the blossoms of all my loves

rain down with the falling leaves of

autumn oak, to be buried

in a common heap.

Malibu

60005.png

I saw a changing woman at the threshold of the sea—

No goddess gold or black or bronze could shake her

      mutability

Her tears poured on the pebbles for someone held too close

And from the depths of memory a Lady’s voice arose:

      Let’s love with hands open, strong and free

To unlock the doors within doors within doors of

      This unfathomed sea.

Fractions

60005.png

I want to cause you a

sharp pain

at the thought of my arms

and legs and lips

around another

Then console you

only with the fact

that it is not one but many—

many because I gave my heart to you

You

took it and broke it into

a million pieces

so that I cannot give

in that one-woman-only way

again

but just in fractions to the masses.

Wanting

60005.png

i want to see another side of sun rise

away from this traffic in toil

where the gains are small

      the fears exacting

i want a garden

      laid out with all my food

      plus irises—a place

where i can talk with myself and see

who on earth i might be

where i can take a virgin canvas

      to the clover out back

and paint on her a burning sunset

      from the wood behind the house

then, ecstatic, chop the wood

      for my Inside Flame—

what a circle i could draw!

play piano for the owls at night—

who would listen better: tell me, who?

writing days, reading nights

      from winter into spring

ready for what gifts a season brings

finding no romance, no disgust

      in any extreme

but grace on grace, peace to dream—

      my Inside Flame burning bright

undampened by these hurried sighs

      these busy tears

Are You Awake?

60005.png

You whose laughter wakes the dead of spirit,

Seeing wonder beneath each rock,

Clutching joy in the minutiae of nature

That we sleepers ignore—

You ask me once more....

Properly awed by the world,

You suck me into your odd seeing,

Until my own senses soar with the Divine

Roar you hear in all that lives,

The marvelous glow that your face gives.

Just when my shoes lift off the ground,

High on our footlooseness,

Grazing lazily on the treetop clouds of our sandbox adventures,

You yank me back to earth,

Tearful blue eyes saying,

"What about the homeless boy,

The old abandoned woman?"

Scatological horrors both animal and human,

Bedsores and bruises—your unsolvable koans where

Everybody loses.

And so we pray; candles burn by night and day.

No half-sighted visionary, you—

No cross-less crown, yours;

Intimate friend of pain, soulmate of suffering,

You who have seen and tasted the bloody sweat of Christ.

But again, in rainbow reason, paradoxically,

Shines from this cloud exuberant glee,

For justice and peace, eyes that see;

But for my own sin a stubborn blindness,

For my own weakness a dogged kindness;

How often I would have corrupted you.

But you, impervious to