Blessed memory

with love for Robin M. Weintraub z"l

I sip my lukewarm yellow mug of grief tea,
wonder, should I microwave it up again?
Got cold so quick and this cup is

gone, rather, this cup’s worth, at least,
the hawthorne berries, tulsi, oatstraw, mint—
there’s maybe one more evening in the fridge

I’ll find I’ll know the right time to drink it
and God knows there’s always more to steep

My waves of you peak softer, further apart,
like birthing in reverse—no—like ripples
making their way, unlost, infusing deep

49 toward the Omer

What day! What a flower on the table! What two dresses in the bag, two dresses in the bag! What dream to have rest and then excitement! How many library books to carry inside! How many quiches to make! And we wait! And we count! And we stop waiting.

48 toward the Omer

yesod shebmalkhut

The learning is coming, it is not here yet. Have to breathe out before we breathe in. Have to close eyes before opening them. Have to cry out before the silence comes, before the answers come, before the peace comes. Have to say no before the yes comes.

47 toward the Omer

hod shebmalkhut

I feel the number of yesterdays I could go back to. What about today? The image returns—a butterfly relanding on a stalk, the joy of realizing not the was gone but that I find again. Control mastery theory, my friend says. You’ll cry when you’re safe.

46 toward the Omer

netzach shebmalkhut

How not to be late and not leave early—I just need occasional overlaps, time pleats, do-si-dos, retrogrades, rock steps—and why couldn’t ambivalence, here and there, be accepted like electrons that do nothing wrong in defying our previously held assumptions of what constitutes motion, location?

45 toward the Omer

tiferet shebmalkhut

What am I seeking not to be present for when I don’t write poems? The sense of should have? That I will not catch up? That they will not be adequate? That the words will not come? That I am too powerful? That you are?

44 toward the Omer

gevurah shebmalkhut

Tax return checks photographed, submitted. Running shorts, then linen pants. An email received: permission granted for a weekend in Philadelphia. Hair complimented, fingered, in the teachers’ workroom. Lamb’s ear in the garden across the street from her house. Tomato soup with beet juice swirling.

43 toward the Omer

chesed shebmalkhut

Three days ago, I struggled to have the car door open and the car light off at the same time so the moth had some chance of flying out to live overnight, if it was the type of moth that would do so,

and today, there is no one person on the dance floor whom I am drawn to as powerfully as we were drawn to walk yesterday to those trees whose orange flowers were visible across the entire park, and that is fine by me.

42 toward the Omer #2

malkhut shebyesod

This bird with the broken wing—how can we pass it by as it flutters and rolls across the sidewalk, but what are we doing by stopping? Things die, says Sam, whose house we are outside of, before carrying it to grass.

42 toward the Omer

malkut shebyesod

Touch this plant, they say, and I do. Rubbery, they say. It is, I say. It’s been weird to touch things, I say, soft things, fuzzy things—there’s something about it I haven’t been grasping, this thing where my hands are me.