The Right Thing

                                          If I had done the right thing, never run away,
                                          stayed home  instead and gone to college,
                                          married a Jewish boy,
                                          kept a kosher kitchen,
                                          sent our children to yeshiva,
                                          cooked and baked and scrubbed
                                          while my husband davened
                                          or hired a maid and played Mah-Jongg with the girls
                                          while my husband davened
                                          (after trading blue chips on Wall St.),
                                          had I done all of that, now I'd sit,
                                          no doubt, with him, on our condo's verandah,
                                          overlooking the surf, lifting with one
                                          meticulously painted red-fingernailed hand
                                          a crystal glass filled with Mogen David
                                          and we'd sigh, thinking of our children,
                                             all grown now and far away in their own
                                          kosher condos, the doctor, the lawyer,
                                          the almost-millionaire. And
                                           if I had done the right thing, would

                                           I scan the beaches for the one
                                           who had done the wrong thing, escaped
                                           to the opposite coast, dropped
                                           out of school, married then divorced
                                           a goy, the one who keeps nothing kosher
                                           but lights Shabbos candles, hangs
                                           out with the Shekhinah, Buddha, Kali
                                           and the opposing stars, who raised 5 underachieving
                                           free children, and lives now in a rundown
                                           cottage with a woman artist and 9 cats,
                                           writes poetry with a never-polished-chewed-
                                           fingernailed hand, sits on torn couches
                                           and runs on distant beaches,
                                           a wild joy in her eyes
                                           though she looks with a twinge of guilt,
                                           of failure, of regret, for me, what she might have been.

                                                         © Pesha Joyce Gertler
 

Published in Calyx, Calyx’ 10 year anniversary edition, Calyx’ 25 year anniversary edition, Beacon Press Anthology, Pontoon Anthology