Nishmat Kol Chai

Were our mouths as full of song as the sea

and our tongues as full of rejoicing as the waves

and our lips as full of praise as the breadth of the horizon

and our eyes as brilliant as the sun and the moon

and our arms as outspread eagles' wings and our feet as swift as deers' --

it would still not be enough to thank You, our God of eternity and eternities.

Psalm, Alicia Ostriker

like a skin on milk
I write to you
I hurl the letters of your name
onto every page, one and many
I know you are reading over my shoulder
look each of us possesses a book of life
each attempts to read what the other has scripted
in these almost illegible letters tipped by crowns
what is the story
we want to know

i thank you God for this most amazing, e. e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


haggadah Section: Hallel