Blood, Frogs: A #Passover Poem by Daniel A. Olivas

Blood, Frogs…

Do you know me, Adonai?

A latecomer to your Seder table?

A visitor waiting for Elijah?

Vermin, Wild Beasts…

You blessed the Moabite,

Ruth, with an honored place

in Ketuvim, so there must be

hope for me.

Pestilence, Boils…

My people have suffered, too,

though nothing like the Inquisition

or the Holocaust.  But the Aztecs

were fooled and then slaughtered,

raped and oppressed by

the Spaniards who rode proud horses

roughshod over meso-America

creating a mixed gente,

the Mestizos.  And then discrimination,

a glass ceiling we hit, in this great

country, as we scratch towards

the American dream.

Hail, Locusts…

But here I sit, a Jew for only

twelve years, looking at the

matzo, bitter herbs, shank bone,

amidst other symbols of oppression

and subsequent Exodus, Diaspora.

My wife’s family (and even my son!)

easy and familiar with it all, as much

a second nature as my Chicanismo

is to me.  But each year, I

recognize more and more,

mouthing the Hebrew faster and

faster.  Is there hope for this old dog?

Darkness, Slaying of the First Born…

I took the name of Ysrael when

I converted because Jacob wrestled

with the angel and saw the face

of G-d, before he, too, became a

Jew and took a new name.

I wrestled, struggled (did I see

the face of G-d, too?), for over

six years before making the choice.

It is a choice I do not regret, but, at times,

when my ten-year-old son breezes through

the Four Questions in Hebrew (not English!),

I am a stranger searching in bewilderment’s

twilight for my soul.  Can an outsider

take on another people’s traditions,

burdens and history while maintaining

his own proud history?

Can an outsider ever stop wandering?

Will I ever be at home?

[“Blood, Frogs” is featured in Crossing the Border: Collected Poems (Pact Press, 2017).]