This piece is part of our Witnessing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the experiences of Jewish writers around the globe in the aftermath of October 7th.
It is critical to understand history not just through the books that will be written later, but also through the first-hand testimonies and real-time accounting of events as they occur. At Jewish Book Council, we understand the value of these written testimonials and of sharing these individual experiences. It’s more important now than ever to give space to these voices and narratives.
Pledge
I walk the trail and rejoice the dirt doesn’t hate me,
nor the light honeying half-known southern trees;
the bamboo brush and squirrels rustling through it,
the damp air I draw in — none of them hate me. If it falls,
rain won’t shrink; it will caress me as one of its own.
My dog on the leash — she loves me, she watches
and waits for me, curls her hot back up to me in bed.
Yet as I walk I keep wondering whether my footsteps
score the map of a country I’m not part of, not the way
I’d cherished in fantasy, in my secret Protestant dreams.
Always I thought solitariness was what made me,
some difference only mine — not those I belonged to,
mostly without noticing. I am a Jew, my heritage
scrolled on the face I press through American air
among some who cast me in tropes I’m scared to know.
And those I consider my friends, have they stiffened
their spines to endure me, wishing they could shudder
their skins free of my people, like fly-stung horses?
So to what, I ask myself, do I pledge allegiance now,
with this heart that lives less by presence than devotion—
what can I cherish, what can I cling to on my final day,
or as another, starving in Auschwitz, or captive in Gaza?
To my dog, at least, in her innocence, fleet and fragile,
mortal as this world, though around us fresh leaves
quiver in the light, I pledge myself, and to the hidden
breath that moves us all — so near, spirit I cannot name;
and to the generations I’m part of, wherever they lie, lost
in the old Pale, or drifted deep in the Levant—
even if they don’t speak to me, don’t comfort or protect,
turn away to their own conversations, observances,
silences — I pledge myself; picturing those last homes
where earth shifts and settles to embrace them, where rain
falls and a green scent rises, before drops work their way
down centuries to kiss them on their pebbled lips.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author, based on their observations and experiences.
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Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle, winner of Sappho’s Prize in Poetry (Headmistress Press, 2023), and What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in journals including North American Review, On the Seawall, Whale Road Review, Lavender Review, River Heron Review, and JUDITH, and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart awards. She is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Raised in Manhattan and New York’s Hudson Valley, she presently lives in Greensboro, NC, where she is a new member of Temple Emanuel and an over-60 Bat Mitzvah student. Find her at annemyles.com.
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