Wayne-Daniel Berard teaches English and Humanities at Nichols College in Dudley, MA. An adoptee and former Franciscan seminarian, his birth-search led him to find and embrace his Jewishness. Wayne-Daniel is a Peace Chaplain, an interfaith clergy person, and a member of B’nai Or of Boston. He has published widely in both poetry and prose, and is the co-founding editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry. He lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.

Finding Out You’re Jewish

Wayne-Daniel Berard

It’s like being thrown down a very deep well
only not by your brothers, as you don’t
have any anymore which doesn’t

surprise you as you didn’t have
any in the first place, not really. You
recognize it from the depths up;
always you’d lived here, although you
didn’t know it and neither did anyone

who found your vision too direct, too
unsquirmingly real, too centered
on the light circling at the top while
everyone else felt buried alive.  You
didn’t know why you didn’t, or
why you knew rain would come
eventually and raise you up and out
so you’d better not get too used to
this narrowness, and even then that
wasn’t the end of it; that open valve
of light you’d stared up at day after
counted day, 1,3,6, suddenly became
all there was of 7 and when they all
said, “run, idiot, you’re free,” you
didn’t, didn’t want to, just had to
stop in the wholeness of that day’s sky
even until it darkened and
something everything smelled
of cinnamon, and a braid of shooting
stars dipped into the deep
and sizzled and you sang from
the bottom of your well which
you had been thrown down into
once again but not by non-brothers,
but by (you think maybe) un-Absence
who insisted you be the same and
learning you were this you rejoiced
and once more lifted up your eyes.

— Wayne-Daniel Berard

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