We've counted our seven weeks of seven days between Pesach and Shavuot, between one once-upon-a-time spring harvest offering and the next, between liberation and revelation. Shavuot begins tonight at sundown -- whee!

In celebration, I offer a poem, written a few years ago and collected in my as-yet-unpublished book-length mansucript Manna. Chag Shavuot sameach -- wishing a joyful festival of Shavuot to all.

 

LONGING

 

I'm thirsty for davening
in this gritty desert
of car wrecks and cell phones.
Every person killed
anywhere
keeps the promised land
blocked to our passage.

Who knows the path
to short-circuit
this wandering?
Some days manna falls
but others we're back
to toil, scratching
like chickens in the dirt.

If I was there at Sinai
to sign the ketubah
God offered, black fire
on white, most days
I don't remember.
Everyone forgets the unity
we started with.

This year
when our anniversary comes,
God, I want to stay up
all night
to feel the letters
traveling up my hands
into my heart.

I want to sing holy at dawn
with the birds
in the willow behind shul
who open and close each day
with praise.

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