Patti Tana

MOVING DAYS

Solomon chose an understanding heart. God made him wise as well. I fear I have too little wisdom, too much understanding. Your guidance counselor chided me for being too understanding. That became a joke between us when you'd get your way and when I did for you what you should have done. How hard to strike a balance. Letting go, holding on, holding up, holding back. I remember chaffing at my mother's fearful cautions, tried not to pass them on to you. When you were two I went with her to Israel. At the Dead Sea the bus ran late, no time for a bathing suit. I hiked my long skirt up my thighs - started wading in - "Patti, you'll get your skirt wet!" Mother shouted from the bus. We laughed about that scene for years, then I had a chance to play it back: Fifteen, on your own in Jerusalem, you called from a bus station when a girl invited you down to the seaside town of Eilat. From the other side of the world I pushed away the image of a bus strewn across the road and said "Go get your pants wet." Moses and Jesus, standing on the shore, come to mind today. Turning to Moses, Jesus asks how to do it, and Moses tells him, "Walk on the rocks." My rabbi taught me God's a metaphor for God, said the Red Sea was a reed sea and Moses knew the tides, making the passage even more wonderful. Find the solid places, slippery though they be - life is washed with blood and tears. Learn the tides. Get your pants wet. Patti Tana is the author of the forthcoming collection "Making Your Way Across This Bridge: New & Selected Writings" (Whittier Publications, 2003), which will include this poem. She is also professor of English and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Project at Nassau Community College (SUNY) and the Associate Editor of Long Island Quarterly.

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