Rosh Chodesh Elul II

Left shul before shofar
So wake me up, wind
Play with my hair
Pull me to awareness

Rosh Chodesh Elul I

I eat pizza
with friends as the sun
descends on a tefillinless day,

talk future
with a new classmate
between sunset and stars,

chuck flour
with grain moths
as my first act of Elul

The Dybbuk Respoken

"I came to watch that I might see a stranger God"

The center and the peripheries

There is a pebble before my cross-leggedness
Its rippled shadowedge darkens toward the other edge of its vertical surface
In looking I hear the whispers stronger than the voices
God is like the negative spaces of a doughnut, in the center and the peripheries
An ant traces its own alphabet in the grainground
It does not have to fall off the face of the earth to reach
transcendence, it can burrow in deeper,
all the way to China

Piles

This time last year
in a dark noisy room
I leaned to my left
and you leaned right and I said

"This time last year
I was crushing on you
so hard!" And you lit up
and said "Me too!"

and like years piling
upon gone-by years
our arms found rest
upon each other's shoulders

and we swayed one more time
to the same old niggun

Praying in Pearlman

I pace the
curved avenue
between chair rows

as if on
a long call
with a friend

half-diverted by
a carpet labyrinth

49 toward the Omer

God, when you speak to us, speak of vastness. Speak of knowingness, babies' eyes. Speak of yellow flowers. Speak of the smell of rain through trees. Speak of night, of the crooked line between beard and neck. Speak of goodness. Speak of simplicity. Speak of okay. Speak of okay.

48 toward the Omer

I look forward to the trampoline to come, feeling my feet held by you among black fire words before they release me up again like a person throwing a dove from her cupped hands into the air with a soft push for encouragement, trajectory, instruction for the alonetimes

Maybe that's why we're supposed to take our shoes off in holy spaces, so it's easier to notice the caress, the slight bounce. Why wear clothing before you, God? Help me remove this raincoat, these galoshes, I didn't mean them, I'm not sure how they even got there

47 toward the Omer

hod shebmalchut

A year ago today I wrote about singing melody instead of harmony and now I read this poem to a different collection of melodymakers and I notice my process of coming into the group, and, relatedly, into my own, standing on this rock with a friend friend

I walk away from the campfire and for once am okay with the beauty of the song continuing on without me. Am I continuing on without the beauty of the song? Thirty minutes later, a mandolin, a guitar, two voices, a stack of music, carpeted floor, peace.

46 toward the Omer

netzach shebmalchut

I hold in beyonddimensions where points are planes, moments eternities. Let's hold hands now. It's noted. Shabbat as niggun: Sound changes enduringly. Shabbat as spinning paper: Drops of color swirl, remain. God says you gave it I took it there are no takebacks. Perfect, I say.