Omer poems 2013 (5773)
preceded by a pre-Pesach poem
Anointed
Almost finished with my pre-Pesach shower
I reach for the clear bottle of
turquoise body wash
"infused with
exfoliating sea salts"
I touch the perfume of our deliverance
to the backs of my ears
3.25.2013
1 toward the Omer
my
friend
and
I
compared
our
preferred
poetry
and
prose
styles
to
our
preferred
relationships
3.28.2013
2 toward the Omer
I decide
to wait
til later
to praise
the Holy
One Who's
Blessed cuz
I don't
think I
feel like
it quite
yet but
as I
remove my
tefillin I
notice I'm
humming a
tune from
Hallel and
I realize
that I
do indeed
feel like
it but
I decide
to wait
til later
to praise
the Holy
One Who's
Blessed cuz
3.28.2013
3 toward the Omer
Should I doubt
my sense of
God since it
varies from room
to room and
I've known for
a while that
it really depends
on how much
air is blowing
through the vents
That's really the
reason why I
sense God much
more predictably at
night when taking
a walk or
sitting on a
bench with you
There is a
silence that gives
me a sense
of God in
that low hush
of leaves rustling
in the wind
But maybe I'm
just remembering my
mother's swishy uterus
3.29.2013
4 toward the Omer
There are times when
God seems closer than
the people around me
And other times when
the people around me
seem closer than God
And by closer I
actually mean more real
or more in focus
It’s as if I’m
located at the intersection
of perpendicular planes within
a multidimensional coordinate system
3.30.2013
5 toward the Omer
"All real living is meeting."
—a quote from Martin Buber
Every once in a while
I talk too much and
forget to listen for God
I realized two days ago
that I also generally fail
to ask God any questions
When writing Grandma these days
I don't ask her questions
so it doesn't feel awkward
that she doesn't write back
but I think God might
or maybe God should feel
just a little bit awkward
3.30.2013
6 toward the Omer
Paul du Chaillu discovered the gorillas
and gave smallpox to Gabonese people
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle scares me
while I consider Harvard Divinity School
My head is deep within Gemara
and my skin distinctly remembers God
I wash my hands by Halakha
and my shoulder distinctly remembers God
At what point do the answers
get buried under searching for them?
At what point do the answers
get smothered under caring for them?
I never asked to see God
under a microscope. Had no need
4.3.2013
7 toward the Omer
People on the balcony across from me
are hammering away at a plastic container.
They pass the hammer back and forth,
he without gloves, she in yellow gloves.
I would say that I'd been trying
to identify the source of the sound
for weeks, but that is not true.
I had wondered, sure, but never looked.
A white dog weaves around their ankles.
4.3.2013
8 toward the Omer
A young woman advises a friend by phone.
I tap her and give her thumbs up
when she mentions she's heard but cannot verify
that on yontif it is preferable when showering
to wash each part of the body separately.
After she hangs up we start talking Jewish,
dropping yeshivas, dripping Ashkenazis, and I am aware
of my blue jeansed legs crossing and uncrossing
and feel guilt and discomfort when I realize
I present like one who once was derekhed
instead of like one who might never arrive
*derekh: way, path
4.3.2013
9 toward the Omer
Gevurah within Gevurah as the blankets nestle never tighter
around a sleeping figure content with power the world
has always known in its most constant quiet harmonies
The mild serene being neither contains nor is contained
It is neither black hole nor body emitting light
Lines on its face are neither cruel nor manic
There is no tension or force to be found
Solid through and soft with just the right heft
Its space taking up the right amount of space
4.4.2013
10 toward the Omer (1)
When harmony and discipline align
the universe expands in stately time
and galaxies aglow with mellow light
cavort in darkest space like butterflies
And though I think it’s dangerous to find
significance in every verse that rhymes
it seems that every now and then it might
make sense to see what meanings do arise
Does harmony require compromise?
Can love go on when lives don’t coincide?
4.5.2013
10 toward the Omer (2)
This morning I woke up an hour and a half
before my cell phone alarm would have woken me up
and I decided to keep from turning my computer on
until after I had done at least one productive thing
That’s how I came to daven Psukei d’Zimrah and Shacharit
with tallis and tefillin and the prelims and the postlims
I started by putting a sweater back in its drawer
and ended a few minutes earlier than I would have
if I hadn’t remembered that we are still in Nissan
and therefore no matter what I feel there’s no Tachanun
4.5.2013
11 toward the Omer
When considering, today, the natures of aloneness and companionship
I wondered how each of my cells feels among the rest
Is there a way to express the opposite of being alone
that doesn't make mention of the existence of other discrete entities?
I am not sure that there is companionship except in knowing
that the person standing next to you is also alone here
Black holes have event horizons and we too have a point
at which we'd just become each other and be alone together
There is the beginning of healing in recognizing our semipermeable membranes
4.8.2013
12 toward the Omer
I look down at my boots in the back of Naftali's truck
while I lounge on tarps next to a table that we're moving
There is no seatbelt and every once in a while I worry
that either I or the table is going to slide too much
but I think of the New York City subway and feel calm
4.8.2013
13 toward the Omer
How happy it is to exult in front of an ark on Shabbat!
How glorious it is to sing with others in praise of our God!
How calming it is to know that our dancing has a holy purpose!
How worrisome it is to learn that a mouse died in the sink!
4.8.2013
14 toward the Omer
I draw myself up to my most regal height in my best Shabbos clothing
There is majesty in my posture and in the narrowness emphasized by my skirt
Gliding across the room in the Chabad school building is one of my joys
For I love being taken for a kind person of grace and unmarred elegance
Though I wish that kind elegant unmarred graceful persons weren’t hit on as often
4.10.2013
15 toward the Omer
She offers Neil Gaiman nosh that has been waiting patiently by while he enthralls us
Neil Gaiman tells her "I would love a strawberry" "I will definitely take some strawberries"
4.10.2013
16 toward the Omer
A pause as compassion
starts its journey toward you
Billows expand then contract
It leaps upward,
reaches hands forward, diving
between the reefs of vocal chords
where it gets trapped
and thrashes
Its struggles set the mucous membrane
into nervous flutters
that lend shape
to its dying
breath
Lame and faint
the breath releases itself
through dry parted lips
“I’m sorry
to hear that”
4.11.2013
17 toward the Omer
Tiferet sheb’Tiferet: Hannah (Omer Calendar of Biblical Women)
There are times
when I wait
for someone who isn’t God
to appear and keep me company
Other times
I sing to God in private
and really would prefer
that the door stay closed
One time
you opened the door
and I shut up
and was silent around you
all afternoon
It was kind of like when that boy in middle school opened the bathroom door on me
I was horrified that he saw me naked staring at myself in the mirror but thrilled too
My beauty
should be for God
and for my husband?
My beauty
should be for
the universe
4.11.2013
18 toward the Omer
You tell me about the day
when your son
went into the kitchen
and you realized he was crying
Mama,
you quote him to me,
For what do people get born
when no matter what they die?
God made it
so people died,
you tell me you told him,
else the next generation
wouldn’t fit!
You tell me this story
about eight times
in the course of an hour
so I still remember
4.14.2013
19 toward the Omer
I hope you and I would still have become friends even if I had not been lonely freshman year
We had an agreement that I could chatter nonstop and you would only listen to thirty percent of it
You surely paid more attention than that while I skipped in order to keep up with your long strides
4.14.2013
20 toward the Omer
Getting enough sleep is essential
to functioning during halakha shiur
but prayer can be enhanced by a bit of tiredness
Like at Shavuot Shacharit when all I ask God for is a short Musaf and a bed waiting for me
That’s not true.
Last Shavuot I did not ask for those things
although Musaf was ridiculous
and I exhausted laughed
Even so nothing pulls me like my desire to return to sleep does
other than my desire to keep reading
I think of those who heard and felt the explosions this afternoon. May compassion reign supreme soon in our days
4.17.2013
21 toward the Omer
I looked at the sky through my legs today
and ran across the grass with my arms spread as plane wings
Maybe some angels zoomed along with me
There’s a movie, Angels in the Outfield,
so I bet they’d’ve felt at home
4.17.2013
22 toward the Omer
It is a tough week
with a kind interlude of chili and popcorn and friend and futon and The Secret of Kells
4.17.2013
23 toward the Omer
I am tempted to postpone writing for Day 23 until I have actually displayed some discipline and endurance but writing this solves it
4.17.2013
24 toward the Omer
A bottle of hard cider sits on my counter
Thinking of Noah and Aharon,
I resolved not to drink when sad
so it waits
4.19.2013
25 toward the Omer
The shadow from the lace mechitza falls across my open siddur so the apparatus separating me from everyone else creates at least one beautiful thing
Men together sharing a joyful purpose is also something beautiful and I observe maybe like God watches when two people find company in each other
My feminine presence once filled the whole room and so did God and then we did tsimtsum. Occasionally we regret it, wanting to mingle
but even though we want to take care of people sometimes it is more important for them to learn to seek and give comfort internally
4.21.2013
26 toward the Omer
There’s an unfinished section of the wall in the balcony of the Eldridge Street Synagogue and our tour guide asks us why we think that is
I raise my hand and suggest that it’s a reminder of the destroyed Temple that is not yet rebuilt (I didn’t actually say that last bit)
She tells us actually it’s there to demonstrate what state the synagogue was in before they restored it (really to show that they had restored it
because otherwise someone might walk in there and think it had always been just as beautiful as now but no they worked really hard you see
and there is little as frustrating as when someone sees you and thinks that you are not putting any effort into things but it took me
a long time to get to this place but there is no flap of skin you can lift to see the aged slats of wood underneath
I am no destroyed holy house nor will I be rebuilt I am no not yet what you see has always been my offer to you
4.23.2013
27 toward the Omer
if I’d watched my speech more carefully maybe we would never have gotten together maybe we never would have fallen apart but neither of these happened anyway
4.23.2013
28 toward the Omer
I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York
I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York
I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York I’m not ready to leave New York
Don’t panic you’re just getting your period Molly don’t worry it’s all gonna be fine it’s really fine you’ve done this before I’m not hush go to sleep
4.23.2013
29 toward the Omer
(During the fifth week of the Omer we recall the sefirah of Hod—translated both as splendor and as humility—and today we find lovingkindness and compassion within it)
Be kind to yourself in those moments when you wonder to yourself Maybe I am a Lamed Vavnik and then you think With that thought I invalidate the possibility
I don’t have a Messiah complex I have a Messiah, complex, who is as much me as anyone else, and I’ve made no attempt at saving the world anyway
(even though I dream of doing so. Oh how wondrous to just have everything fixed and all the people fed and no more spilling blood I’d just snap fingers
and sometimes when I pray I consider myself part of what keeps the world turning, like pressing down the knob on a salad spinner or treading a gerbil wheel
(although horrifying crap goes on here, the blood of our brother cries out from the ground and we step forward always forward, so maybe keeping it turning isn’t enough)
and I dream of prophecy, not just having knowledge but standing on a stage with my arms thrown wide and my eyes flashing and people Listening to my Message
(but what this message is remains unknown to me, I just know that whatever I will have to say it will be Important and people will Actually Pay Attention
because I know a lot of my desire to have them hear comes from a deep hatred of being tickled where when you say stop stop they don’t stop
and of dancing in a circle and the acceleration is now something beyond any of us or at least it is not me and I need it to end
there is a book slightly askew on a shelf not breathing but the bookshelf is in a glass case so I can never fix it but I need to
the righteous obsessive compulsive sees you throw plastic into a trash can says stop stop you’re tickling this hurt doesn’t stop please fix the world I can’t reach it))
4.25.2013
30 toward the Omer
My first chevruta visits and we have a lovely time catching up but it goes beyond that to contemplation of life things and places and people. It’s been so long
that I don’t remember if we used to talk quite this way but I like that we talk this way now. During our first hug I notice our height difference
and during our second hug I remember that we shared a chair once for an Acher lecture and it’s from then that our faces ended up on the Pardes brochures
while it is only as we hug a third and fourth time at the door that I fully realize you weren’t here and now you’re here and now you’re going
4.26.2013
31 toward the Omer
rushing waves rushing water water
rushing waves rushing water water
rushing waves rushing water water
home
rushing waves rushing water water
rushing waves rushing water water
rushing waves rushing water water
4.28.2013
32 toward the Omer
I feel ashamed of myself when I wonder whether it is the moments when I feel God or the moments when I don’t feel God that indicate the actual truth about God
once when I came back from a time of doubt of God I knew that I had failed. I had been given the opportunity to have faith and did not have faith
and I knew that the opportunity to have faith was now lost to me because when feeling God there is no need for faith in God. Knowledge supersedes the need for faith
but now I know that this is not true because I have come to doubt the knowledge itself even when it exists and that, I’ve found, is the worst of all doubts
for before I just had to wait for the God feeling to return but now it’s here and there’s nothing to wait for and yet I wonder whether it’s just the way
that the air feels against my skin and therein lies the danger of being taught that God is supposed to be beyond my perception because then what becomes of my perception? Falsity
4.28.2013
Lag BaOmer
After praying this morning I looked at the dirt path that headed in a direction I had not yet walked and decided not to head that way and was comfortable with that decision
unlike when you leaned forward to kiss me and I turned my head and then always wondered why and what would have happened had I chosen the path I had thought I'd wanted
yes, my decision this morning was good although there’s no real comparison because I really wanted to kiss you and not all desires are equal and neither are feelings about roads not taken
4.29.2013
34 toward the Omer
Find that little root connecting you with the spreading branches and then you’ll raise your eyes and see that your waving fingers look a little like the fuzzballed antennae on top of strange birds
4.30.2013
35 toward the Omer
Malkhut shebHod
In the Chabad synagogue in Moscow on Tisha b’Av in 2009 a group of Israeli children played games on the landing and one small girl with light hair started twirling and I took a picture
that kept her in my mind paused midspin with a soft blond halo around her luminous face, a beautiful girl child with Hebrew as her mamaloshn turning slow and free until my camera stopped her
the memory card she’s on is still in Russia because I didn’t search for it well enough before getting in the car for the airport and the apartment I subletted belongs to a new person
which is as it should be really since once she noticed me she said no to my photography and I have my ethics but gosh what a knowing little serene one what a breathholding moment
4.30.2013
36 toward the Omer
I told you about how things have been scary for me with religion this year because what people tell me I shouldn’t be able to know about God undermines the foundation of my knowledge of God
we were both waiting for phone calls while walking along Amsterdam and my voice kept rising in pitch and volume but then I came to the end of it as we waited for a traffic light
and I knew and said I know God is here right now and repeated it again and as we got to the other side of the street you said hodu laShem ki tov ki leolam chasdo
we kept walking as I agreed hodu lAdonai ki tov ki leolam chasdo using God’s name because it was a true praise what a kindness to have a moment of settled knowing what a deep breath
4.30.2013
37 toward the Omer
So I misunderstood my teacher who explains of course I can have knowledge of God just not mathematically not through proofs and all of a sudden my interior landscape returns to calmness and smiles although I wonder
whether one can assert that someone who has proofs of God is incapable of having complex experiences of faith and doubt since God’s existence certainly is not the only God question that one can struggle with and
what does it mean about the relationship between me and God that the words of one person can flip me upside down and just as easily months later flip me right back again and I must conclude
that I cannot blame my teacher at all for it was years ago that I started layering on the paper mache of others’ opinions and at some point I just mistook this coating for the truth underneath
it turns out that it really only takes a few sentences to crack through the stiffened starch and release the candy from its beautiful cobbled exoskeleton but this Molly has forgotten what her own skeleton looks like
5.2.2013
38 toward the Omer
tiferet shebisod
“Like Avishag, caretakers must try [to] achieve…compassion embodied in intimacy. We experience Avishag’s presence in our lives when we provide for the physical needs of others with compassion and gentleness.” –Rabbi Jill Hammer, Omer Calendar of Biblical Women
I still get emotional washing dishes because I have this feeling this ghost feeling of someone coming up behind me and wrapping their arms around me in a hug so my back feels protected and I am loved
in the moment that never happened I set the sudsy plate down on the countertop and lean backward into you and close my eyes for those few precious seconds and the water continues running but I don’t mind
maybe in my next phantom sensation you can be playing with my hair as I fall asleep cuddled in blankets, how about that, parting it over and over again, the sound of the waves rolling in to shore
5.2.2013
39 toward the Omer
If ever lizards studied Heschel it was me and my friend this past Shabbos lazing on benches basking in the warmth of the sun and the glow of his words on teaching learning change mind heart seeing hearing openness
As we transitioned to discussing souls our tongues flicked out tasting wind carrying the scents of leaf and wasp and teenager and our fingers absentmindedly toyed with the tiny yellow flowers that clung to our clothes and our hair
We images of God change every instant and each frame of animation is its own instantiation we are stop action paper snowflakes flipbooks in time connected to our past and future selves by binding by string by God’s nostrilbreath
5.4.2013
40 toward the Omer
Three adults wrapped in wool blankets wobble forward across the dark field following a skunk heading past the bushes toward our boss’s cabin because we have never seen such a creature before and besides we are giddy with sleep desire
Happiness is curling up on a mattress in a cold room monitoring one’s drift into dreaming while shadowy figures stare into the night through opposite windows to make sure that less mature individuals stay safe from each other from themselves
It was a soul who threw the ball that hit me behind my right ear and another soul who drove us to the train station and yet another soul who did not close the doors until we were on board
5.6.2013
41 toward the Omer
Yesod shebisod
Black sky with bright stars above the dark trees—cool air and the muted sound of distant grownup conversations—us sitting together on the patio broaching the topic of God and existence—the universe encircling our two bodies—a flower opening—
5.6.2013
42 toward the Omer
Malkhut shebisod
Sitting on my futon thinking of poem topics I come to realize there is something regal in taking the time to restore one’s foundation and tonight that means caring for my body so I am off to bed good night my dears
5.6.2013
42 toward the Omer (2)
Malkhut shebisod
I've tried to stay regal through our times of approach and distance as if my world does not topple when you are silent as if you are not one of the legs I stand on as if I could dismiss your presence
in all the conversations I have with myself and others about connection and calm and silence and kinship but how can the ability to feel intimate ever be divorced from the one with whom that intimacy was discovered as if you were
a person I could just mention on an acknowledgments page right next to God and my family and my teachers just your name and the sentence "thank you for making me who I am today" while the me of today walks onward
this queen is weary of palanquins and graceful pleasantries and practical considerations she is eager to discard the courtly etiquette of measured dispassion she yearns to return to a time when there was no need for us to carry each other's handkerchiefs
she thinks she may have been mistaken in donning the ermine mantle provided by human notions of what is dignified for is not the Shekhina herself a majestic presence majestically present really truly present so radically present that she cries with us
maybe nobility is actually located in opening up in that acknowledgment of vulnerability so hear me now I am naked before you close the gap lift me up by both hands tell me don't worry I'm right here there is no alone
5.7.2013
43 toward the Omer
Joey Weisenberg playing mandolin rests his right foot on top of his halfturned left foot similarly to the way that I nestle my feet into each other when I am about to go to sleep which is, I’ve decided, a habit from wombtimes
5.8.2013
44 toward the Omer
Dr. Zornberg quotes Emerson saying “I am nothing I see all I am part and particle of God” Cavell saying “we all know how the world goes away from us” herself saying “the wilderness” is when “the people are left to their own da’at”
One evening while crossing Amsterdam the realization expanded from me with a hollow dark light that I have no God given witnessing mission here and I fell asleep unsure if there had ever been that celestial rung I could no longer find the ladder
“the limits of my grandiosity” correlate with the realnesses of everyone else and I think I am happy letting go of being the reason for the universe if it means I can have some company some intersubjectivity so come let’s have a staring contest
and then blink and giggle and look away unsure whether it’s okay to hold the gaze which actually cannot penetrate to each other’s deepest selves anyway and isn’t that fact just the coolest thing ever once you get over the loss that it signifies
5.9.2013
45 toward the Omer
Tiferet shebMalchut
I was sitting having finished my Amidah and you came over and paused before me and I looked up and thought you were going to ask me to open the ark but instead you asked me if I wanted to be the speaking gabbai again
and I was surprised by the question but you had noticed before I did that it would be good for me to be gabbai rishon another time before leaving yeshiva and you told me you would take the third aliyah and that made me happy
for I had noticed that you almost never got an aliyah since you always were the one to call others forward but this time I got to invite you up and it turns out your name is Avraham Rachamim which fits you so well today
Avraham due to your desire to bring others in not just a beckoning hand but an active walking out to greet the traveler seeking comfort even if there are hurts you might be nursing and Rachamim because you give of your self while preserving dignity
5.9.2013
46 toward the Omer
Netzach shebMalkhut
Ayelet chomps wetly on my fingers during Shabbat services and I am filled with the glory that comes with being able to keep a baby calm and happy and this bliss mixes with a certain serenity as I focus on directing my joy outward to God
and it is tonight that I realize the God I knew in my youth and the God I am praising today are the same God which is something I guess I knew but also kind of forgot or doubted since I encountered them in different settings
and there is a type of knowing that isn’t certainty that doesn’t reach past “this must be true” to “this is true” that is too intellectual to have the parts come together with a profound settling like the snapping of a magnet to a refrigerator door
but there is that snap today and something inside of me that had been like tectonic plates colliding with the occasional earthquake or gush of volcanic tears becomes smooth as glass an ocean of wonder as far as the eyes can see and the feet walk
and the heart breathe and it is different from my discovery of the realness of other people for training my vision on the aspect of individuals that has nothing to do with which colors of light bounce off of them is a task of the conscious
while this discovery of God’s eternal oneness allows me to relax and stop fearing that I’m seeing a new E with every additional lens that I acting as both patient and optometrist flip into place. I’ve actually just been seeing the same E with different clarities
and maybe it’s funny that I say “in my youth” seeing as I’m still young which makes me wonder how I will experience and know God when God willing I am old and this in turn makes me wonder what bifocals mean in this extended metaphor
5.13.2013
47 toward the Omer
Hod shebMalchut—Humility within Nobility
It has taken me almost twenty-four years but I finally find myself happier singing melody than harmony and I think it’s possible that I’ve actually always found more happiness there but never quite felt that I belonged and therefore chose to separate myself from the other drummers
who were beating out the complex yet unified patterns of community but I also think it’s possible that I found glory in uniqueness and really I’m not sure which came first distinction or alienation hubris or defense mechanism and I remember holding the door for other kids
partly because I was kind partly because I wanted to be seen as kind partly because I could count how many thanked me each time partly because it gave me something to do while they all talked with each other and then it just became my role
and I sometimes wonder how much of my orientation toward other people is based on the fact that back in middle school being the nice girl known for mild friendship with everyone was a pretty stable social position but I also trust that it’s deeper than that
anyhow I fit inside the melody with you all and even when I itch for my cliff in Siberia I usually want to share it with a companion and in any case I know my real home is here and I entrust the harmony to the angels
5.13.2013
48 toward the Omer
The trip to Sinai checklist must include a sense of yourself and a sense of openness to being not quite yourself someday soon and a realization that the not yourself of your future is still you because learning and change are terms that acknowledge both then and now
we are in that moment where the steps up and across are getting smaller and smaller until height plus length is no longer the correct way to measure the distance and instead we have to calculate the square root of the sum of the other two sides squared
5.13.2013
49 toward the Omer
I
1. Come
2. come now
3. wash your clothes
4. refrain from having sex
5. don’t you know it’s time
6. to go appear before our Creator
7. at the foot of the mountain together
8. yet separate each of us destined to hear
9. the Kol call on a different frequency so let’s
10. stand here holding hands so we don’t lose each other
11. in the particularism of the holy moment for it will try
12. to knock us off of our feet but we must ground ourselves
13. in each other and not succumb to the desire to unite with God
14. in a way that tears us person from person for the way of Enoch
15. is not the way of all the children of Adam and we must continue living
16. right here even it can be very hard and God is kinder than we are sometimes
17. and it may seem that we will be less lonely with God than with our fellow humans
18. but our lot is to be the water that falls from the sky connected to bits of dust
19. in separate drops where first we are unwilling to be away from the cloudsource but then we run forward
20. occasionally colliding along the way such that we cleave and part and dance the merry dance that we call living
21. until we reach the destination that we want less and less as we accelerate toward it although in meeting that end
22. we will return to what we once desired so ardently never to have left behind and since this is the path ahead
23. as well as behind it makes sense to cling tight to each other while remembering that we are not all that there is
24. but this notion of us and God is necessary but not sufficient for God is not just a source and an end destination God
25. is both then and right here both waiting for us in the distant futures and in our most immediate presents which brings us right back
26. to this particular present where we are looking toward the moment of Revelation while simultaneously recognizing that we are already exactly when we need to be
27. so be disturbed and happy and calm and never complacent and make sure that your preparations include donning your fears and your smiles for both are you
28. and it is exactly you who is supposed to be here so look around isn’t it great that we’ve finally arrived and not one of us is missing
II
29. No one ever told me that trying to approach you again after having left once would at times feel like walking up an asymptotic curve toward the y axis
30. and at other times take no effort at all as if I were a particle forever forbidden from entering a black hole except for those moments when a wormhole opens
31. and I can leap across to Gan Eden for a brief bath in the spring of togetherness before the muffling blanket of adult-onset doubts pushes me right back through again
32. and while I can recollect what those moments are like I have no proof for the nature of black holes is not to let any sound or light escape so it is memories
33. to which I hold fast although I know it is the Torah that is the tree of life I am supposed to strengthen myself by but I am yet afraid of the chasm
34. that yawns between my childhood notions and this set of stories and strictures that contains your breath in its warp and weft just as I do so I sing into the universe for this
35. does not require me being in any particular place as long as I think that you are able to hear and upon reflection I know that I never doubt you when I speak to you
36. which seems to mean that if your praise is on my every exhale then I will always be sure of your existence and maybe that’s why King David is so focused on calling out to you
37. with all of his bones all of his soul all of his self it’s really handy to have this method of jumpstarting the knowledge of you when I don’t just look out in the world and think
38. of course God is here right now it’s so obvious as I look out from this picnic table and feel the air on my face and watch Etta shooting hoops in her flowing white sweater and long black skirt
III
39. I think I recognize you in the swirling mass of people shifting in huge whorls and eddies around the foot of your mountain maybe you thought I wouldn’t notice or maybe you were just waiting to be found out
40. because isn’t it true that you felt a sharp pang of something when you created a second person to keep that first person company for how else would you know that it was not good for man to be alone
41. if it were not that loneliness strikes you just as deeply if not more so how about this God I’ll take a turn at being big spoon tonight and we can watch a movie have some quiche and you can rest
42. even if you will never consent to sleeping and I will look out the window and see the stars and count them even when you are not looking because I know it brings you joy and you will quietly murmur their names
43. and we’ll set an alarm rise in the morning early enough for you to take your place and call out in lightning and thunder and great tremblings and I will nestle within myself the knowledge that you and me, we got something special
IV
44. how is it that I’m choked up at the end of my journey isn’t this what I came here for but now I’m attached to this feeling of wandering I’ve gotten used to calling out to you in words and dances and I know
45. that there will be more dancing when we meet I know because I’ve seen the timbrels I’ve been preparing for this role my whole life ever since before you split the sea for us ever since before I knew that my feet were for walking
46. but that doesn’t mean that I am ready and at the same time I am more ready than I’ve ever been and it really just gets back to that sense when you’re kissing someone and don’t know when it’s right to move forward because moving forward
47. means letting down my guard and while my favorite way to be is open I know that the final openness means that I will lose the sense of there being a me and a you and it is this separation that allows me to enjoy you so
48. or so I think and maybe I have always been confusing awareness of you with you so I think I am ready to take a break from my anxiety and go change into my red dress which is good because it’s about time and the people are gathering
49. I’m not ready to leave you is the phrase in my head and my heart but I know that leaving you was never something I could do consciously even if I wanted to which is never true and since I’m conscious of you now I will see you tomorrow
5.14.2013
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