Velveteen Rabbi

A new poem which takes the form of a psalm

Psalm of parenthood

Mother of all, remake me
in Your image. Make me as noble
as the daffodils nodding graciously.
Root me in my generations.
Help me hold on to the splendor
my son sees when he runs toward me
at the end of a schoolday.
Give me the flannel-soft patience
for one more board book, one more cartoon.
Help me to balance the scales
of work and child
gentleness and strength.
Reinforce my boundaries
so I never confuse my child's issues
with my own. And my heart, God:
enlarge my ribcage
to encompass this overflowing love.

 

---

 

I've been working lately on some new poems which double as prayers and psalms. Here's one of them, a Psalm of Parenthood. It's structured loosely around the seven lower sefirot, emanations or facets of divinity: malkhut (nobility), yesod (foundation), hod (splendor), netzach (endurance), tiferet (balance), gevurah (boundaries), and chesed (lovingkindness.) These are among God's qualities; they are also among ours, and I think they're some of the qualities that parents need most.

If you like this, you might also like Waiting to Unfold, my new collection of motherhood poems, recently published by Phoenicia Publishing.

A Shabbat afternoon poem

Saturday Afternoon Request

Help me to silence
my mind's aggravation alarm,
to quiet the voice which says
the to-do list matters,
to temporarily eschew
continuous partial attention.

Open me to long slow conversations
on the sunlit grass, to the beat
of the hand-drummers who accompany
the singing of psalms, to a boat
lazily drifting on the glassy surface
of my heart's own pond.

You're waiting for me
like a lover, eager
to embrace me again.
Remind me: this is the way
back to Eden, the bloom
on the thirteen-petaled rose.

 

 

---

 

I wrote this poem remembering some of the sweetest Shabbatot I've spent on retreat with my Jewish Renewal community -- days when, following a week of Torah study and learning, I was able to fully and wholly immerse myself in the sweetness of Shabbat, in a time apart from ordinary time, in a remembrance of Eden and a foretaste of the world to come.

The last line is a reference to a classical metaphor from the Zohar -- see R' Adin Steinsaltz's book of the same title.

Shabbat shalom to all!

Distinctions: a poem for Havdalah

In the end we're like children:
we thrive on distinctions
between me and you, us and them.
Made in Your image
we separate light from darkness,
family from stranger, weekday
from that fleeting taste of Paradise.

Wax drips from the braided candle.
Cinnamon tingles the nose
to keep us from fainting
as the extra soul departs.
Stop now. Notice this hinge
between Shabbat
and what's next.

Plunge the candle into the wine
but don't cry: even without a flame
our light still shines. This
is our inheritance, better than rubies.
And now it's Saturday night, the cusp
of a new beginning, another day.
This week, may our hearts be whole.

 

---

 

This poem was written to accompany havdalah, the ceremony which ends Shabbat and begins the new week. (Though if you don't have the custom of making havdalah regularly, I suppose you could read this poem in place of havdalah; it's not the same as actually doing the ritual, of course, but it's a way of marking the transition with mindfulness.)

I'm experimenting with seven-line stanzas, meant to evoke the seven days of the week. "[T]o keep us from fainting
as the extra soul departs" is a reference to the teaching that an extra or second soul descends and enlivens us during Shabbat. We smell sweet spices at the end of Shabbat in order to revive ourselves despite the departure of that extra soul.

"[E]ven without a flame / our light still shines" is a reference both to the practice of extinguishing the havdalah candle in the sanctified wine, and to a line from the prayer we read as we begin havdalah: layehudim haita ora v'simcha v'sasson v'ikar, ken tihiyeh lanu, "and for the Jewish people there was light and joy, gladness and honor; so may it be for us."

April Daily: a chapbook of 30 poems

National Poetry (Writing) Month was fun this year. Over the course of April I wrote 30 poems: about parenthood, morning prayer, a rooftop New York city bar, a walk to the beaver dam, Iron Man and the golem of Prague, and more. The vast majority are poems I never would have written if I hadn't been doing the NaPoWriMo experiment this year.

Earlyish in the month, my mother emailed me and asked if I could make all of the poems available to her in one file, easy to read, with the commentaries alongside -- maybe even in hard copy, something easy for her to thumb through? I said sure, I'd be happy to do that.

And then I realized that as long as I was making a single file with all 30 poems and all 30 commentaries, I might as well make it look pretty and make it available to anyone else who wants it, too. So I asked Twitter for help coming up with a chapbook title, and, well, here you go.

I feel a little bit silly sharing a new chapbook when I've just announced the release of a new book. Let me be clear: April Daily is the result of a month's worth of play; Waiting to Unfold is a real book, the product of years of work and hours of editorial back-and-forth!

So, y'know -- if you're just going to buy one, get the real book. Seriously. But if you're into daily poems, or if you participated in NaPoWriMo and you're curious to see what I did with the product of the month's work, or if you're just a completist, here it is. (And Mom, don't bother ordering a copy -- one's already on its way to you, just as I promised.)

April Daily: 30 poems in 30 days

$3.59
978-1484841402

April 2013

 

With deep thanks to 30/30 poetry and NaPoWriMo for the prompts. Here's to National Poetry Month!

Daily April poem: riffing off of a famous phrase

ETHICS OF THE MOTHERS

 

Ben Zoma said:
Who is wise?
One who learns from everyone,
as it is written: from all of my teachers
I gained understanding.

Who is happy?
One in pyjamas watching cartoons;
one who rejoices in the combination
of puddles and rain boots;
in trains of any dimension.

Who is frustrated?
One who yearns for a cookie
upon waking to the dawn
even though it is known
cookies are not a breakfast food.

Who is fortunate?
One who says thank you
for the trees, for the cars,
for the new Spiderman undies,
for the moon.

 

---

 

This poem grew out of a NaPoWriMo prompt which invited us to take the first few words of a famous saying, plug them into a search engine, and make a poem with what we found there. It's traditional to study Pirkei Avot -- "The Ethics of the Fathers," a compilation of rabbinic wisdom -- during the Counting the Omer, so I thought of the saying from Pirkei Avot (chapter 4, mishna 1) "Who is wise? One who learns from everyone, as it is written: from all who taught me, I gained understanding."

Anyway: today's poem arose out of that bit of Pirkei Avot. The first stanza is a direct quote from Ben Zoma; the other stanzas are my own invention. Consider it a fragment of Pirkei Imahot, the Ethics of the Mothers.

Daily April poem: riffing off of a 30/30 prompt

THREE FISH

Left in the cup-holder
of the convertible carseat:
three goldfish crackers
waiting patiently
to follow their fellows
into oblivion.

 

---

 

This poem is riffing off of the "three new fish" prompt at 30/30 poetry. New fish made me think of old fish, which made me think of goldfish crackers, and this poem unfolded from there.

Daily April poem: a Biblical erasure poem

HOLY

Any person shall be holy.
You must treat them as holy
outside the sanctuary.

No man may
enter behind the curtain --
instruct them throughout the ages.

As soon as the sun sets
if a daughter marries
she may eat.

When any man
presents a burnt offering
it must be a male.

A sacrifice must be
blind, or injured, or maimed
bruised or crushed or torn or cut.

Sacrifice it
so that it may be
in your favor.

 

---

 

The folks at NaPoWriMo invited the writing of erasure poems. I've been reading daily erasure poems from Dave Bonta at Via Negativa for a while now (see The Pepys Erasure Project so far), so I was excited at the prospect of trying to create my own. Instead of working from an existing poem, I worked from part of last week's Torah portion, parashat Emor -- specifically from Leviticus chapters 21 and 22.

As a poet, I'm fascinated by the erasure process. As a rabbi, I do want to point out (in case it isn't clear) that this erasure process has substantially changed the text of Leviticus -- this is not what the Torah portion says! It's interesting to contemplate the version of scripture which would have argued that only women may enter into the Holy of Holies, or that in order to be fit for sacrifice an animal needed to be damaged rather than whole.

Below the cut: images of the erasure, so you can see how these words were carved out of the text.

Daily April poem: sidewalks (or lack thereof)

OUT OF THE HOUSE


It's all downhill from here:
the winding driveway, the road
even the turn onto Silver
toward the cave and waterfall.
When cars careen past we walk
single file at the asphalt's edge.
Once we reach the beaver dam
the surface turns to hardpacked dirt,
gentler beneath our boots.
The chorus of frogs grows loud.
Look, a mallard duck sails
slow and regal across the pond.
A tiny plane soars, buzzing tinny,
across the blue expanse of sky.

 

 

---

 

This poem was written for the "sidewalks" prompt at 30x30. It was inspired, at least in part, by the experience of coming home after two days in New York City. Life in the Berkshires is a lot quieter, and there's a lot less pavement! Still, there are things happening here, and things to see and admire -- they're just...different.

Daily April poem: a triolet

NIGHTLIFE TRIOLET

Above the city, rabbis talk
laughing in a rooftop bar.
I lost my scarf, our crosstown walk --
above the city rabbis talk
of love and colleagues, get a lock
on each others' guiding stars.
Above the city, rabbis talk
laughing in a rooftop bar.

 

---

 

This triolet (written to a NaPoWriMo prompt) was inspired by a nightcap at the Gansevoort with a handful of my fellow Rabbis Without Borders. It's a bit flimsy -- there's not a lot of substance to it; I'm curious to see if I can write a triolet with a bit more gravitas -- but it was fun to write, and I figured y'all would enjoy a poem that's not about religious practice or my three-year-old for a change.

Edited to add: for those who are curious, here's no NaPoWriMo defines the form: "A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB."

Daily April poem: inspired by a Yiddish folksong

COMING SOON

Ribbons and pearls adorn
this golden land, and messiah

will come this very year.
If we can only believe.

The man who taught me this
wept every time he sang

his body shaking with yearning
for the world redeemed

where no oil fires burn
and no mothers grieve

where no one would pour water
down another man's nostrils, or

pack a handmade bomb into a square
where joyous throngs have gathered.

I don't know anymore
what would bring her, what

he's waiting for, but
tradition says moshiach sits

with the lepers outside the gates
with the sick and poor and frightened

waiting for us to offer
a drink of fresh water

a clean bandage
an embrace.

 

 

---

 

This poem was inspired by the Yiddish folksong "Shnirele Perele." You can watch/listen to it on YouTube, read a bit about its history, and read the lyrics here at Perry Greenbaum's blog if you're so inclined. I love this song, though the melody (and meaning) wrenches at my heart.

The last few stanzas refer to the Talmudic story about the messiah sitting outside the gates.