Elul Day 1.  Decide

 Leaves turned the seasons 

Calendars flipped through decades

And I thought of telling my story

From the day she kissed me in my kitchen

From the time she kicked me in the shin

when I said I could not walk in the snow

For years she wrote of Jesus, of saving grace

of praying for forgiveness

Later on she moved to a mountain 

where she created an enclave for her family

We parted and she said we could talk 

but never about that time when she sinned

She and I wrote once or twice a year

0f this and that, small things

Sometimes books but in time she only read

tomes on Jesus, of people who followed

and people who led missions to places

where worship had a different lexicon

Whenever I began to tell of my life

she changed the subject

When did I decide to write a letter

telling her about my relationship

of over forty years

years of joy

I sent the letter

Her son wrote to me saying she had died

before she read the letter

He read the letter