Pomegranates


Abraham Mezrich




i

The world did not stand still until the pomegranates fell from the sky. Red and soft and filled with juicy seeds, falling like mannah-bread from Heaven. But the pomegranates came and we opened them, peeling away the rough skin, eating them up. And we saw Light.


ii

Before this the world had been water. We could not move about except by making rafts, tying together small sticks that we had gathered over the course of two thousand long years.

At nights in our dreams the world had no fixed ground.

When we awoke, the world truly was this way. A useless sleep.



iii

But then came the gifts from God: pomegranates from the sky. We did not know how to answer and the pomegranates were the cause of celebration and the cause of praise. When we ate them and had the seeds in us, the seeds made us dance.

It was a lovely dance. We moved to our front and to our back. We moved to each side and then up and then down. Moving to the East, the West, the North, the South, and then Upwards.



It was the dance that God wished.



It was a surprise when, at our celebration, two thousand years of earth's water formed to dry land, shapelessness to shape.



iv

Something from nothing. Where there had been only water now we could put our feet on the solid ground.



This is how the sea was set aside, bringing forth land, a dancing-spot.



v

We had been so young, so unknowing, so senseless that we did not think to expect such a thing as this could happen at all.






Image: Shulamit Widawsky

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