Casting Stones

Usually, I have one or maybe two poems to offer on any given portion, but, of course, B’reishit covers a lot of ground, including the first act of creation and the first murder—Cain’s slaying of his brother Abel. I find myself drawn to the rejected sons in the Bible (of which there are many). Like Cain, the exemplar of this type, they often seem more dim than evil, boys whose natural complement makes them easy prey for sin; as G-d tells Cain, sin “is a demon at the door; you are the one it craves” (Genesis 4:7). In this poem for my brother, I think about the jealousy that is part of every sibling relationship, and how, sometimes, the demon wins.

The way our mother tells it, I absolved you
for the pebble that caught me in the thin skin
of the forehead. Even as I sobbed, I told:
We both were throwing stones, and I had bent down
for ammo, standing the moment you let loose
with a wicked slider. I must have been four—
we were farmers on the hill where the peas and roses
climbed the terraces below the house. So spring,
and we two, cooped up with measles that long March,
had at last been set free to retake the yard
from squirrel and crow. It’s not that I remember
but imagine the harsh scarf that Bubbe* knit
chafing at my neck, and the raw wound
of being, always, second. How true to me
your aim appeared, while my poor missiles thudded
near my feet. I think I would have struck you down
could I have trained my stone as I know you did.



*Grandmother in Yiddish