24 toward the Omer

Heat, trees.
Soft footsteps.
I lift my eyes.
I see.
I look back.
God nods,
once.
The door
flaps
behind.
I go
to myself.

23 toward the Omer #2

Today is twenty-three. The poem was written half the day ago. What do I do now? I've caught up to the path.

The spaciousness is unfamiliar but created. The spaciousness is not in equilibrium with the spaciousness outside the spaciousness. There is an opening somewhere,

closed by a door, and I know I can open the door and see what's on the other side, but I know already,

the door is transparent, there is song out there but so much else besides, and suddenly I understand my friend's fear of success,

because success is a castle that disappears into a vista where you see what's around and it is nothing you feel protected in

23 toward the Omer

New York Times photograph caption: More than 25 million years ago, India crashed into Asia. The two land masses are still colliding today.

Roget's International Thesaurus Third Edition colliquative 390.7 collision: contrariety 15.1 counteraction 177.1 clash 282.3 accident 727.2 opposition 788.2 contest 794.3 hostility 927.3 collocate:

15. Contrariety nouns 1. contrariety, oppositeness, opposition, opposure; antithesis, contrast, contraposition, contradiction, contradistinction; antagonism, repugnance, oppugnance, hostility, inimicalness, antipathy, clashing, collision, conflict; polarity.

173. Tendency 174. Liability 175. Implication 176. Concurrence 177. Counteraction nouns 1. counteraction, counterworking; opposition, opposure, contradiction; antagonism, repugnance, oppugnance or oppugnancy, antipathy,

conflict, friction, interference, clashing, collision; resistance, renitency. 178. Space 179. Region 180. Country 181. The Country 182. Town 183. Location 184. Dislocation 185.

Presence 186. Absence 16. Difference 161. Violence 159. Weakness 190. Abode 503. Incredulity 406. Life 407. Death 444. Invisibility nouns 1. invisibility, imperceptibility, unperceivability

2. indistinctness, paleness, dimness, darkness, shadowiness fuzziness haziness mistiness fogginess verbs 3. be invisible, escape notice, lie hid, blush unseen adjs. 4. unbeholdable

insensible sightless out of sight unseen unbeheld unobserved unnoticed unperceived 5. indistinct unclear unplain indefinite undefined ill-defined ill-marked faint dim vague


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22 toward the Omer

Clean faith. Clean faith. Tears, bones, in faith. Chest, throat, in faith. Faith needs to be talked out of suicide at night
when there’s too much to do already. Faith wears all colors except blue, which is reserved for the priesthood. Faith is
candles upon candles, upon candles, upon mirrors, upon mirrors. Faith is the night of water in the night when the moon swings
and the clouds scatter in no wind. Faith is silence. Faith is choking silence. Faith is choking silence in grief. Faith is
choking silence in unknown. Faith is known choking. Faith is known constriction. Clean faith. Clean faith. Clean, pure, luminous, floating, comforting, faith.

21 toward the Omer

Shlomiya fingers an edge of my beige knit sweater, says that in crochet everything is made of different-sized holes.

20 toward the Omer

Blue flowers grow around growing trees. We stand in my kitchen. What's here say? she says, touching. Okay, I say.

19 toward the Omer

Yesterday I was caffeinated and was talking to my dad on the phone and walked straight past the building
that I thought I was supposed to stop at and so I continued on to the next building thinking
maybe there is some reason I'm supposed go there and I hung up the phone and went inside and asked
three different people if they might be the reason I was supposed to have come there and they said
they didn't know but the last of them was not feeling like being in that building so I said
do you want to walk back to the other building with me? and he said sure and we left
and in front of the first building is a volleyball court and the path went in front of it
and I asked if he wanted to sit outside for a minute because there was still some time left
but the wind started blowing real strong and before he could answer the volleyball court sand was skating over us
and so we took that as a no and let the air and sand move us inside the building
and I knew there something to know and though I've forgotten what it could be enough to know that

18 toward the Omer

At night I put on someone else's pajamas with the smell of the evening's puja in my hair
and in the morning I put on two dresses, the second one black, the first a mystery underneath

17 toward the Omer

If I add day twenty to a start from days ago is it any approximation of seventeen?
Yesterday for once I was the first to get out of bed. God, sometimes I don't know
if you're the one searching or searched for. I used to hide in cabinets in my dreams.
Is that what cleaning for Passover is about? So that one day we will finally come across
you where you tucked yourself away in a moment of loneliness between the allspice and the marjoram?
Will it matter in that moment who found whom or whether we even meant to do so?
Will we be able to hide our look of surprise behind our look of relief or get
over the having forgotten look behind the look of surprise if we see it in the other?
Sometimes it's hard to remember what's here in my kitchen and similarly sometimes you're so far away

16 toward the Omer #2

"The idea of a single point of explanation is fundamental to the religious or mythological style...."
(Fisher, "Wonder and the Steps of Thought," Wonder, The Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences)

God, what do you know of discernment? Did you create this because there was nothing else
you could think of that would give you more satisfaction? Did you map out the overlap

between your gifts and your needs? Did you send your nostrilbreath through a prism (the second
thing in existence, that which separates) in order to view the results of your possible choices?

Did you make everything you ever imagined because that felt like a way not to decide?
Did you create the stars just to consult them? If so, God, I have to say

you can trust yourself, the answers you seek have always been right there inside of you