Tag Archives: God's plan

February 21, 2025 · 7:30 am

The Lord is My Shepherd 

by Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

I shall want to know one day

why God made hurricanes and floods – 

and rested on the seventh day.

I shall want to know one day

why God sent down famine and disease – 

and rested on the seventh day.

I shall want to know one day 

why God rested on the seventh day

but did not grant us any rest.

Rick Black is an award-winning book artist and poet. His artist books are represented in private and public collections, including the Library of Congress, Yale University and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. A journalist for many years, Rick’s poetry collection, Star of David, won Poetica Magazine’s 2012 poetry chapbook contest for contemporary Jewish writing. A reading of Star of David was held in the Middle Eastern & African Division of the Library of Congress. He recently published a new collection, Two Seasons in Israel: A Selection of Peace and War Haiku.

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December 22, 2022 · 10:00 am

Chanukah Metaphor

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Nun.

Gimel.

Hey.

Shin.

The four faces of the dreidel,

a game learned in childhood,

a metaphor for adults.

Take all, lose everything

put in two, take half.

Fate turns on a spin, 

fortunes flip on a dime, 

a fifty-fifty chance for the dime, 

a one-in-four shot for the dreidel. 

Thus, the questions I’ve wrestled with

ever since childhood:

is it luck, circumstance, or fate,

or are we all part of God’s plan?

Does He spin the dreidel for us?

Does He decide which side turns up?

Or are we subject to twirling all our lives 

and watching where we land?

Nun.

Gimel.

Hey.

Shin. 

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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