Simon Fleischer’s most recent poem to appear here was “Endoscopy” (November 2017)

Sitting Alone in the Shul at Night
By Simon Fleischer

I

Sitting alone in the shul at night,
my father, the rabbi, having slipped through
his secret door into his secret office,

wherein the secrets of the Torah
studied, turned over and over,
delivered themselves unto him—

in the last pew, in the shadows,
while dangling before the holy ark
the eternal light casts its distracting glow

across the empty late night aisles.
No parishioners here. No prayers.
The sacred is a set of cues, a choice.

On the other side my father shuffles
his daily bread like paper.
I miss him, but I don’t call out. I wait.

Alone in the sanctuary at night,
an ancient drift dreams itself awake,
shuffles through the dark and grips,

until my father’s voice rings prophet-wide
through the empty shul that night:
It’s time to go home.

II

Sitting alone in the shul at night,
stained glassy stares, the world
in silence, an empty room
of prayers and yesterdays—

A boy alone in shul at night,
no bathroom light casting itself
down the hall, no door left open,
no comfort footsteps to a safer dawn—

Don’t dream. A boy in shul at night
barely breathing, he considers:
Something sacred moves along
velvet pews, something broad and old.

Waiting for salvation, the boy
sits alone in the shul at night.
he reaches, he listens, he turns
toward the sound of a door opening.

His father finished, he rises at his name.
He knows: we leave but we don’t forget.
He waits until he’s home to breathe.
His holy dream a secret still.

III

This time it’s the holding hand moving through
the boy who sits alone in shul at night.

This time no spirits speak in shadows,
no sacred whoop or whisper, no dark demand,

nothing but the waking pressure of his father’s hand,
the walking to, the waiting for, he remembers—

the coat he wore, the smell of shaving cream,
his backwards swoop of hair, the corners of his eyes—

memory rises and sets itself in lines divine.
He knows there is no holiness but this:

Waiting for his father, alone in shul at night.
Together in time, he holds his father’s hand.