An exercise on Psalm 119
I am truly blameless. Or happy. Or neither one.
Deep at night, I sit in the shadow
of my own verses
the furrows I tread with my mouth
sheltering saplings that might never grow
into a real oak or a maple dripping with syrup…
The furrows get sticky, holding
my knees and ankles— I need to grow
new soil, massage the crumbs
with my fingers, a sapling of earth itself
that will carry dark, heavy fruit, moist with questions,
a different source of food
for my busy tongue, treading the lines between
time and dawn.
Britta R. Kollberg, born in Berlin, graduate of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing, Bar Ilan University, has worked as a graduate mathematician in East Germany, and in education, advocacy, and social services after the fall of the Berlin Wall.