Poems can take on a life of their own, especially once they're released into the world. Every year I write at least one poem related to the Days of Awe, and I send it around as a new year's card. To my great pleasure, some of those poems are starting to find a wider audience.

Last year, two of my High Holiday poems were published at Tel Shemesh. This year, a poem or two of mine are slated to be included in a High Holiday supplement at Heska Amuna, a Conservative shul in Knoxville, TN. And the new poem I wrote this fall (and printed on this year's card) has had some adventures, too; it was apparently read at a harvest moon gathering, alongside Robert Frost's "Unharvested" (now that's fine literary company!)

How do I know this? Because my friend Diana Elvin chronicled it in Celebrating a fall bounty, her most recent newspaper column. Though the formatting isn't preserved in the online edition, the print version features the penultimate stanza of my poem as the pull-quote for the article, which is pretty neat. (Thanks, Diana and Advocate editors!)

I'd like to share the poem with you -- at least, with those of you who are interested in poetry. (I'll put it beneath the extended-entry link.) May the coming holidays be sweet for you, and Shabbat shalom to you all!