Day 19 of the Omer
April 23, 2015
DAY 19: SEASIDE
In a town by the sea, where the air is sweet with
dune-growing roses and licked lips taste like
salt, where the wind whips your prayer shawl into
the air like wings with a mind of their own, where
at dawn machines groom the abandoned beach,
readying the canvas of the day for whatever holy
inscriptions will be written by childrens' feet,
where the luminous sky cycles through periwinkle
and gold and the blue of hand-tied tzitzit, if you
can balance on one foot without wobbling and teach
Torah to everyone who asks, you might glimpse
the humble splendor of this nineteenth day tucked
inside the empty paper cup which once held pale
frozen lemonade, rattling across the expanse of sand.
Today is the 19th day of the Omer, making two weeks and five days of the Omer. This is the 19th day of our 49-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, liberation and revelation.
Today's poem was inspired by one of Luisa A. Igloria's prompts from last spring, the one in memory of Gabriel Marcia Marquez.