Name: Tree of Life
Duration: P00H01M36S
Description: Poem about the personal aftermath of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 28, 2018.

Tree of Life

from Seaglass Strange by Red O'Hare

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about

Poem about the personal aftermath of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 28, 2018.

lyrics

“No children
among the dead.”
I breathe thick and grateful
At least there's that.

Beth Hillel Synagogue,
I have never been here,
not to any in Portland
Double doors spread like hands
People spilling
like water through palms.

Kids in kippot
dance near doorways
I am tense
Sick silent screaming
I want them behind walls
Want to tell them
Stay away from the windows
Stay out of the open.

We cannot get inside
there are so many people
Watch the livestream
from the stairs.
I hear the songs
that made me gentle every Shabbos
render pulsing rage
into something cold and sharp.

How dare you
measure my people's strength
by how much pain we can endure?
Watch the branch break and wonder
at all the weight it bore.

We were struck at the roots
And we rise and bloom like spring
We are praying in rain like walls
We are not holding our tongues.

My people have moved mountains
and been buried beneath them.

These tragedies
are a centuries culmination
Strange fruit on old trees
This hate is nothing new.

Rome didn't fall in a day.
Watch it burn and warm your hands
by the licking flames
and these can be our end times.

“No children
among the dead.”

At least
there is that.

credits

from Seaglass Strange, released June 7, 2019

license

about

Red O'Hare Portland, Oregon

Red O'Hare is a Ashkenazi Jewish American poet from Oakland, California where she featured twice with Bay Area Generations. A product of Presbyterian missionaries from the Belgian Congo and Eastern European carny folk, Red has been performing poetry for 20 years. She works in a bakery and is compiling a list of people who want her dead. ... more