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The day before Passover

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The day before Passover featured
 
It's the day before Passover
and we're preparing to flee 
Egypt again
 
to leave behind all the tasks
we never got around to doing
 
to bid goodbye to old habits and 
routines that won't take us anywhere
but back to where we started
 
to say farewell to the people who
enslaved us and treated us as if 
we didn't exist.
 
It's the day before Passover
and we're searching for crumbs
so we can toss them away and
 
lighten the load of what we'll carry
through the desert for the next
forty years.
 
It's the day before Passover
and the taste of freedom
is in the air
 
and the smell of blood, too,
of Pharaoh's soldiers drowning
in the sea 
 
and soon we'll open the pages 
of the hagaddah and start off 
on our journey again, the same
journey every year 
 
beginning with the same question —
why is this night different? — and 
maybe this year we'll learn the answer 
 
and freedom won't be a question and 
slavery will be just another word in a story 
we retell each other year after year.
 
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Bruce Black is the author of Writing Yoga (Rodmell Press/Shambhala) and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. He received his BA from Columbia University and his MFA from Vermont College. His work has appeared in Elephant Journal, Blue Lyra Review, Tiferet Journal, Hevria, Poetica, Reform Judaism, The Jewish Literary Journal, Mindbodygreen, Yogi Times, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and elsewhere. He lives in Sarasota, FL.
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