Amidah: on our feet we speak to you

We rise to speak

a web of bodies aligned like notes of music.

1.

Bless what brought us through

the sea and the fire; we are caught

in history like whales in polar ice.

Yet you have taught us to push against the walls,

to reach out and pull each other along,

to strive to find the way through

if there is no way around, to go on.

To utter ourselves with every breath

against the constriction of fear,

to know ourselves as the body born from Abraham

and Sarah, born out of rock and desert.

We reach back through two hundred arches of hips

long dust, carrying their memories inside us

to live again in our life, Isaac and Rebecca,

Rachel, Jacob, Leah. We say words shaped

by ancient use like steps worn into rock.