Waking Up Poem by gershon hepner

“Waking up begins with saying am and now, ”
said Isherwood, singular man,
Those who start blessings, holier-than-thou,
believe that the earth one began
blessed by God who told Man to be fruitful and
to multiply, but saying am
and now when you wake up is proof you understand
this blessing was hardly a scam.

This morning I learned in b. Berakot 60b the laws concerning the blessings a Jew must say when he rises. It is customary to say them not when one rises but when one begins the morning prayers. At the Huntington Museum in San Marino there is a first edition of Christopher Isherwood “A Single Man” (1963) . The first line of the book reads: “Waking up begins with saying am and now.”

9/3/08