choices/food/hope/words

Last Night to Fall Asleep I Listened to Mark Hyman’s Podcast

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 3 Comments

(and it sort of worked)

 

Mark Hyman famous Alternative Doctor

of Functional (not Dysfunctional) medicine interviews

experts on controversial subjects such as

What You Should Eat.  I’ve listened to a few

of these (Eat What’s in Season and If You Have

Digestive Issues Don’t Eat Brussel Sprouts Cauliflower

Broccoli Don’t Eat Garlic Onions etc.) and though the speaker

had energy enthusiasm certainty still I was able

to fall asleep mid list.  And then this morning, not knowing

what I’d heard last night, Peter said, entirely out of the blue

an addendum  to the Mark Hyman podcast

We Should Eat More Donuts.

choices/food/politics/travel/Traveling

Ecuador

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 0 Comment

We were supposed to spend this week

in Ecuador  little like Peru friends said we loved Peru

last Saturday in a bar in Mystic Connecticut before Peter’s screening

woman behind us asked a man how his daughter

was in Quito our destination

Under Lockdown for a Week he said

Can’t Leave Her Room and although we had books

about Ecuador we don’t know

about much of the world  canceled

our tickets although American Airlines continued

to fly to Ecuador We Don’t Pay Attention to Anything

Except Airports said the Customer Representative

home for a week we hadn’t expected tried hard

to pay attention to more than airports.

 

 

choices/hope/meditation/prayers

A Few People Wrote This Week and Asked

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 5 Comments

Is There Anyone We Shouldn’t Forgive?

 

I don’t know Big Answers.  Never did.  I haven’t

studied theology philosophy either or tenants of

religions how  people understand morality I don’t know

much about commandments and rules do know

we all seem angrier now I hear people saying

How Could He How Could They more or less all the time

not just the man whose name will never be in these poems

but but but and I know mine is not a Popular Point of View

years ago an intelligent friend named Wendy wrote a book

on this subject she told me herself that forgiveness

was a cop out  I did not agree with Wendy though she’d

been to law school worked for the ACLU knew the Moral High Road

even so I told Wendy what I still believe :

we have to talk to one another to people we disagree

with family members strangers even violently

and as for forgiveness it doesn’t mean

forgetting condoning either as much as letting go

giving up resentment to accept what is hard

and maybe even unfair and you

are doing the forgiving for yourself.

 

About Me/family/Jews/People/prayers

Yom Kippur is Over, and Forgiveness

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 6 Comments

(I’ve written many forgiveness poems. )

 

 

Forgive me because I am not

usually the person I would like to be

don’t take the high road often enough

hold onto wrongs.  I have inherited that

trait and it’s not a good one.  My mother

was seated at the wrong table number 18

at the Silverstone Bar Mitzvah

and she mentioned that fact a thousand times.

She did not talk to Helen Silverstone again.

I can hold onto a grudge too but this year at Yom Kippur

I tried to exorcise all grudges one grudgee in particular

he doesn’t really mean what he says and neither

do so I forgave us both in my atonement

me for losing patience  I will try for patience

and grudgelessness maybe even understanding

and as for forgiveness you don’t have to forgive

me for me to forgive you.

 

 

 

holidays/Jews/Poetry/prayers/religion

Kol Nidrei

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 1 Comment

Sometimes I go to a service

5,000 people at the Jacob Javits Center

hear  Kol Nidre  three times

in a gigantic room on top of the Hudson River

sometimes I sit on the brown couch in our orange living

room listening to John Zorn or a Famous Cantor

on my laptop an arbitrary decision no solid reasons

behind the way I listen the way I repent the way I say sorry

%d bloggers like this: