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The Promise of the Rainbow
llana Kurshan
“So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
I like to awake while the world is still sleeping,
To lace up my running shoes just before dawn.
The street lights, on timers, turn off all at once
As darkness gives way to the first morning light.
I sit at my desk by a window all morning,
Observing the changes in weather, in light –
The sky as it darkens, the first distant thunder,
The trembling of leaves in the rain and the wind.
We arc toward the solstice. The days grow yet shorter,
The kids have one hour of sun after school
In the park they wear short-sleeves, then sweaters, then jackets,
No jackets, no sweaters, no sleeves – now it’s warm!
My husband returned from a conference in Norway
He said that in summer it never got dark,
Even at midnight, the daylight still lingered,
The sun never rose, and the sun never set.
My heart pulses to the rhythm of light and of season,
Each day has its shades and each moment its hues.
If asked I would say I have no favorite season,
But life without seasons is no life at all.
God’s promise to Noah, a bow of bright color
As red turns to orange, to yellow, to green.
The world will continue to spin. And the darkness
So heavy one moment, will yield to the light.
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The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.
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