49 toward the Omer

malkhut shebmalkhut

days,

like whales,

rise up from,

fall back below, the

surface of eternity, and I,

somehow, am inside of another one

turning another notch on the row counter

hanging around my neck on burgundy embroidery floss

is this tiny click a pleasing sound to You?

what a place from which to write a new song

maybe it would be easier to be back on the boat

but the last time I tried that out, the storms came a’knocking

—

I ask my grandmother Miriam about the wilderness, and she says no, it

never felt like we were retracing our steps, each loop was always somehow forward.

I go to therapy, find that I told her I was away this week—

I’ve been here before, haven’t I?—and go to WEBS, and the store next door,

get a thread clipper and darning needle to finish sewing the braided table runner rag rug

that’s been waiting for months inside of a wedding dress garment bag for me and these tools

to find our way back after last being seen in the snowy Utah desert, or in the hands

of airport security, or in front of a computer screen completing note after overdue note measuring other people’s progress.

My wife and I dance at a reception in Baltimore, sing once again Here I am, baby, signed, sealed, delivered,

and an egg in a follicle that will rupture in a quarter to a third of a year starts to mature, 

and dear Ariel says to me, The lilacs are starting to bloom here—that, to me, feels like news every single time.

—

I ask the Canyonlands, the trees of Mt. Tamalpais, what gifts I can give them, learn that the gift would be to receive.

—

Reveal my heart to me, I said in the pouring rain that night. I cannot do that, You say. I can only hold you

while you reveal it to yourself. Then hold me, I say. Hold me tight with the tightness of a tallis knot gone through the dryer.

Those knots are made from themselves and hold themselves, You say. What does this make of You? of my heart? I say, hear the Psalmist’s words,

unwound and reentwined: Memalei kol almin, sovev kol almin—“For You fill all worlds and surround all worlds (and without You there is no world at all)”—

Are we a tame knot or a wild one? I ask. What a knotty question, you say. This is more familiar ground, I say, but I miss you.

Miss me in one dimension, God says, and be with me in another. I raise my eyes, see a flight attendant. She offers snack mix but carts no pretzels.

—

And I will write twenty-nine lines and I will write all twenty more just to be the woman who wrote forty-nine lines to show up at Your door dada-da— dada-da—

—

It was possible, I know, to have a poem that said thirty-one thirty-one times, and that would have been sufficient. It was also sufficient, God says, that you lived another day,

and we knew you weren’t going to stop there. I ogle the looms, touch the woven samples, close my eyes in bed to see moving images of rings, nails, dowels, warp, wood.

—

A watched pot doesn’t boil, but it does eventually evaporate, and so, too, overpowering desire can lessen possibility. Unable to swim toward or swim away, I tread water til my feet touch bottom

and walk the labyrinth. Hedges flower. Every once in a while there is an opening, and I ask another passerby, Is that the way through? They say, your client just walked into the building.

I come back in two hours, paperwork done, final emails sent. The passerby has moved on, but I’m all right. The light comes through the office window, through the oxalis triangularis, touches my right ankle.

The dollhouse is empty, aside from the pipe cleaner ladder that makes it more safe, and there is no need to complete the Rubix Cube before leaving, which is good, because up until now, I cannot.

I will remember to file away the drawing the kid in the hallway gave to me, made with the paper and pencils and solid base I’d offered them while they were waiting for their sibling, under “Personal.”

Back when I thought I would write about the thirty-eighth day before now, I noted, “Some things I could have predicted, such as the blandness of this airport pizza.” But no one expects—no need to finish that.

In one more line, I can borrow from poems that I have already written. They can take their rightful place. Or is it that these words will take their rightful places around them? White fire! Black fire! Turn around!

—

I set my phone timer for fifteen minutes, sit for fourteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds, check to make sure it’s working—it goes off in my hand. The bachelor buttons wilt in the sun, started too late, transplanted too early.

It is night, it is morning: a forty-first day. Ninety-seven point two degrees. I sit again, the full fifteen. I bleed disuse. I water the celosia, the peas, the basil, my right foot. My uterus builds up a new silver lining.

—

У тёти Моти четыре сына, четыре сына!, у тёти Моти, они сидели, они не ели, но только пели лишь один куплет. Правая рука! Левая рука! Правое плечо! Левое плечо! Правая нога! Левая нога! Го-ло-во! У тёти Моти четыре сына, четыре сына! у—

—

The week of presence is upon us, and there is no patience for writing. All pens are thrown to the ground. All spirals notebooks flutter, torn, into the wind. There are bikes to ride! People to love! Bills to pay! Teeth to clench! Facebook Marketplaces

to scour for Brothers and Bernettes! COQ-10s and Vitamin Ds to send wives looking for! Wordles to get right! Zillows to browse and find more almost somethings on! Watch it, God says. You’re setting up some sort of dichotomy here. You’re right, I say.

You still lived those days, God says. I know, I say. They are as precious as the stars, God says. I guess stars burn out too, I say. Oh, yes, God says. And then do they also paint? I ask. Do they ever, God says.

Remember last Sunday? Day forty-five, compassion within presence? You played Scrabble with your landlord on your front porch after she correctly identified a gas leak and learned that you weren’t about to have your house sold from under you. That, I say, was definitely worth it.

Yeah, I say. Exeunt Molly, God. Oh, God, how grateful I am to be learning how to wait, to be learning how not to. We’re already immortal, if we look at the right cross-section, aren’t we? How long have you waited for us to figure this out?

With the show over, the answers don’t arrive, at least not how they have been. I look up, see the bird on the pillow on the green couch, see the light is dimming, though sunset is not for an hour and twenty minutes. Asparagus quiche is a line,

an email, a car ride, a few blessings, a held hand away. “Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vines, I’ll taste Your strawberries, I’ll drink Your sweet wine. A million tomorrows shall all pass away, ere I forget”—ere You forget—ere we forget—“all the joy”—