Repentance

I'm not a poet, but here's something I wrote last year, less than two weeks after my husband was hospitalized for a couple of days with an infection in the sack surrounding his heart. It was a scary time, and about a month before Rosh Hashanah, so I was feeling a bit dramatic.

Repentance
By Susan Esther Barnes

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed
Who shall live and who shall die

Each year I fear death will come
Before Rosh Hashanah
When I sit down to ask you
Is there anything I have said or done
In the past year
That has hurt you
I say the words and hang over an abyss
I fear the valley of the shadow of death
How could I have hurt you
So much worse
To have hurt you and not even notice
But how can I breathe if I have hurt you
And not only have I not noticed
But have committed a far greater sin
By not providing a safe place
For you earlier
To tell me what I have done
And instead allowed it to root in your soul
To fester there

If somehow I live through it
It is for this I shall repent