Ear­li­er this week, Lenore Weiss wrote about her ​“still, small voice” and her deci­sion to move from Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia to Mon­roe, Louisiana. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

I received a post­card today from a K. Sat­ter­field in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia with a pic­ture of an elk cut and past­ed from what looks like a mag­a­zine with a hand-writ­ten entry, ​“How long did he stand alone on Pike’s Road, due cen­ter, branched horns curl­ing north?” I’m not sure I know the answer to the ques­tion, but I did won­der about it, admir­ing the red and yel­low tri­an­gles past­ed on the back of the card. K. Sat­ter­field took care in send­ing this mes­sage, part of a week­ly exchange amongst a list of poets. 

The elk stands poised on the cen­ter of the high­way. The edges of either lane appear hem-stitched in white. The road is emp­ty. Not a car in sight. Why is the elk on Pike’s Road and what is it wait­ing for?

I am also wait­ing. Rain is com­ing from the north­east, rolling slow­ly into the parish. Birds hear­ing the same thing, call out to each oth­er, antic­i­pat­ing a down­pour as the skies begin to light. And crack­le. The storm can­not be far away. It gets humid just when every­thing should be cool­ing down. The sky is dark and pon­der­ous. Cars make their way to work. It’s Fri­day and every­thing can use a good soak­ing after a week’s worth of triple dig­its. One yel­low leaf floats to the ground, then anoth­er. A breeze lifts the fronds of the ferns on the porch; mail­box­es stand at atten­tion. The South­ern Oak across the street stretch­es its limbs. Sud­den­ly every­thing gets qui­et. Leaves rus­tle. Thun­der march­es clos­er. Light­ning streaks the sky. Cassie, the cat, jumps into a rock­ing chair and sits next to me on the porch. Then she decides to stalk the marigolds and chews a blade of grass. I have been sit­ting here for more than an hour and I’m grow­ing impa­tient. I hear signs and sounds of rain, but Moth­er Nature doesn’t deliv­er.

Isn’t that the way it is, the long wait for some new cre­ative force that comes out of nowhere but was always there in the first place?

The elk and I are kin.

This evening I attend­ed ser­vices at Tem­ple B’nai Israel in Mon­roe, Louisiana. The rab­bi not­ed that the birth­day of Edna Fer­ber, author and writer of ​“Show­boat,” had just passed. Her mot­to, he said, was ​“seize the day.” Some­where between wait­ing and seiz­ing, that’s where I must go.