tabernacles

TABERNACLES



You never have to worry in
a sukkah that the roof may fall
because, according to the din,
there shouldn't be a roof at all.

The sukkah tells you: “Simplify
your life, try making do with less,”
for only when you see the sky
will life not be an awful mess.

Have sense, and try to keep it simple
or you will fail when you find out
no roof can make your home a temple,
and bliss is when you do without.

Do not put in chains your thoughts,
restricting them with shameful shackles,
you don’t needs crosses, you need noughts,
the open sky of Tabernacles.

Homes are prisons if their roof
and walls confine, but pressure cookers
for thoughts that boil, so do not goof,
forgetting the above on Sukkos.

Sukkos is the festival of Tabernacles, when Jews live in a sukkah, or booth, and din is the Hebrew word for law. I wrote the first three quatrains on 10/4/98, in a poem called “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” and transformed the poem with its last two quatrain.



2/12/10