By David Lawrence

Tonight is five nights after my birthday and my son

Is taking me out for dinner.

We’re going all the way.

Four star—

“Adour.”

He is bringing Jane, his Korean wife.

I’m bringing my petal—Lauren

Petal?

Well, I picked her out of the crowd and planted her

In the stem of my heart.

Graham used to think that he was Buddhist,

Now he is Christian.

Jane is too.

My wife is a Born Again Christian.

She watches Joel Osteen.

He looks a little like me.

Some people, God forbid,

Say that I look like Woody Allen.

I am not that ugly.

I am an atheist.

What has happened to religion?

I feel bad about its confusion.

I am tempted to study the Torah

In defense of the death of Judaism.

If the skeletons in the concentration camps

Saw me now?

They would put on flesh and ask if it was worthwhile

After all to have died for Moses?

I am tempted to tell communism and fascism

That religion will stand up against their wholesale killings.

I will become religious.

I will convert to real faith.

I will be your rabbi if you will teach me to believe

In stardust in a landscape without Jewish stars.