Rosemary Dunn Moeller

Ruins of the Mikveh in Speyer, Germany

This stone chamber survives, buried, forgotten
for seven hundred years since the Black Death moved citizens
to annihilate their Jewish population, contaminants.
Archeologists dug down along a synagogue wall stone by stone,
preserving broken artifacts of centuries of worship,
exposed fifty stairs deep toward a spring,
first straight then curved round, a circular twisting until
the stone walled basin, a mikveh, still filled freshly.

Before I arrived, tourists had thrown in coins. Wishes?
I wished to strip naked, wash away the sweat of walking
in cathedrals behind tour guides with minimal knowledge,
step into the depths, now, alone, wondering at rituals.
Could I be refreshed, renewed, here now? My ancestors
got at least three hundred years of relative peace, eating,
working, learning in homes here before being chased east,
or buried out of sight, as forgotten as the mikveh,
too deep to destroy, a blessing of spring water.

Rosemary Dunn Moeller: I have a book of poems, Long Term Mates Migrate Great Distances coming out this autumn 2023 from Scurfpea Publishing SD.