FIRST AND LAST

The first spring peepers clamoring outside every window
The last of the old year's strawberry vodka swirling in my glass

the first dream about reading in an impossible bookstore
the last week before the book emerges, slick and glossy-blue

the first tefillin I've worn in months, wrapping my arm snug
the last heavy boots of winter, overheating my tired feet

the first time he lifts the silver cup and doesn't spill a drop
the last blessing won't be obvous until the next doesn't come

This poem was written on an uneasonably warm evening as the rain began to blow in. I don't think it requires any explanations.

Somehow I always forget that I'm going to be moved.

We're a small synagogue, so every time a kid becomes b'nei mitzvah, it feels like a big deal. I imagine that in some big-city shuls, where there might be one or more bar or bat mitzvah celebrations each week, maybe it becomes a little bit ho-hum. But not here. Here we only have one or two a year, and each one stands  out.

I always love looking out into the sanctuary and seeing the expectant faces of those who have gathered to celebrate Shabbat and to celebrate a young person's coming-of-age. I love leading us through Shabbat morning prayer, offering words of explanation to string the prayers together like pearls in a necklace.

I love inviting people up to see the Torah scroll in all of its unique handwritten beauty. I love singing English words to Torah trope and surprising people with hidden meanings. I love the laughter which erupts as we sing Siman Tov u-Mazal Tov and people throw candy at the b'nei mitzvah kid who has jubilantly finished the d'var Torah.

But I'm typically so focused on the service, on keeping things running smoothly, on trying to facilitate genuine prayer both for myself and for all who've assembled, that I forget that the morning always turns out to hold a gift for me, too. This time what made my heart catch in my throat was hearing one of the mothers of the bar mitzvah boy offer him a blessing she has spoken to him countless times over the course of his life: the priestly blessing, "May God bless you and keep you..."

As soon as she began, I felt tears banging at the back of my eyes. I say those words to our son every week too, punctuating each English and Hebrew phrase with a kiss to his forehead. And it hadn't occurred to me until today that someday I'll say those same words to him in front of our community, as he stands tall in a brand-new tallit -- maybe awkward and gangly, maybe bashful and beaming -- and steps over the threshold into Jewish adulthood. Right now our guy is only three, but I remember when this bar mitzvah boy was only three, too. The days are long but the years are short.

As the mother of the bar mitzvah blessed her son, I pressed my hand to my lips and blinked a lot, really fast, to clear my eyes. By the time I returned to the bimah, my emotions were under control and I was able to speak and sing clearly. But that moment of realization, that glimpse of the future, is still reverberating in me. An unexpected gift.

This poem came out of the NaPoWriMo prompt which invited us to use the same word at the beginning and the end of a poem. Beginning and ending the same way put me in mind of depression, which can take the form of feeling as though nothing will ever change and the clouds will never lift.

I wrote this a few days after the Boston Marathon bombing. It arose out of a meditation service which I led at my synagogue. The doors to our sanctuary were open, so we had the sounds of the nearby wetland in our ears, and I invited the meditators to join me in cultivating compassion and sending it toward Boston.

The line "My heart is in the east and I am in the west" is borrowed from the medieval Spanish poet Judah haLevi; it comes from his poem My Heart is In the East.

Alternating stanzas of the poem are italicized to facilitate reading the poem as a responsive reading. Please feel free to use this however is meaningful to you, and to share it with others.

(Edited to add: in as my About page indicates, work on this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons license which grants permission to share and remix my work as long as you maintain attribution, don't make a profit, and share your remixed work in the same fashion.)

To those for whom it is meaningful, I wish a Shabbat shalom, a Shabbat of peace and healing.

(Also posted at Kol ALEPH.)

THREE AND A HALF

I sense you waiting in the wings, but
my nearsighted eyes can't quite make you out.
What are you holding: a new sun hat?
A pair of floaties, to help you overcome
the swimming pool's vast aqua deeps?

I can't wait to press my lips
against your sunwarmed skin.
Even if you still hunch your shoulders
to telegraph abject woe
when I put the Milanos too high to reach.

If you're anything like the little boy
who plays hide-and-seek with his ballcap
and asks me to pretend to sit on him
so I can leap up in mock surprise,
we'll get along just fine.

But say: would you consider
letting me sing to you again?
I wasn't ready for that window to slam shut.
If I have to, I'll murmur while you're sleeping,
serenade you as you dream of four.

The folks at NaPoWriMo invited us to write poems of greeting. I found myself greeting the next parenting milestone: our son turning three-and-a-half. As of this writing, that milestone is (unbelievably) only about six weeks away.

This poem began its life as a "translation" of The Bee-Keeper by Hungarian poet István Kemény (per a challenge from the NaPoWriMo folks). I don't speak Hungarian, so I rendered the syllables in rough approximation, based on their sounds. Then refined and smoothed the "translation" a few times.

I wound up with a poem about getting hammered. It has absolutely nothing to do with the original poem (which is beautiful and worth reading!) -- but it's an interesting short piece which I wouldn't have written if I hadn't started out with my phonic rendering of the unfamiliar Hungarian words.

I posted a response to the Boston Marathon bombing to my congregational blog today. That post contains excerpts from two prayers which I've found particularly meaningful this week. It also contains links to a variety of resources on grief. Whether or not you're a member of my congregation, please feel free to click through to that post if you think it might be helpful to you: A message from Reb Rachel after the Boston Marathon bombing.

[The omnipresence of tv news] seems to me an ominous symbol of something that has gone very wrong in most western societies: our inability to be with ourselves, to cope with the essential human condition of solitude, especially in situations that cause our anxiety to rise. It concerns me that, in our secular, post-liberal-arts, technological, perpetually-connected society, so little effort goes into teaching children how to be alone, showing them the richness and solace of time spent with nature, with the arts and handcrafts, with books and music, with oneself walking in a city or sitting on a bench: eyes open, ears open, mind and heart awake to the dance of life flowing around us.

I'm with Beth, here. I find that the incessant clamor of the constant news cycle isn't conducive to my mental, emotional, or spiritual health. I'm happier getting my news in more contained doses: from NPR, the BBC, the Times, and -- these days -- my Twitter stream (even though I recognize the dangers of homophily inherent in that last one.) But regardless of where and how you get your news, I think Beth has a point that constant newsmedia-watching can leave us unable to cope with solitude and with uncertainty. Both as a poet and as a rabbi, I experience that as a real loss. Her post is here: A Plea Against Anxiety.

Next, I want to share two posts about the experience of being at the marathon as a spectator and what two women took away from that. The first comes from author Carrie Jones, and is called Boston Marathon. Here's a quote from near the end of that post:

And so many people helped others, making tourniquets out of yarn, carrying the injured, soothing the shocked, giving away their clothes to keep runners warm. And so many people have hearts of goodness. We can't forget that. Not ever. Not today. Not in Boston. Not ever. Because that is exactly what the Boston Marathon is about: It's about not giving up, not giving in to pain. It's about that celebration of surviving and enduring against all odds, against everything. It's about humanity. No bomber can take that away. Not ever.

And finally I'll leave you with Sarah Courchesne's My Lucky Day: the view from mile 22. She writes:

I know how you all feel, watching it all. I understand the shock, the disbelief, the anger and the demands to know why. But from where I stood, my whole day was suffused with the pure good of humanity. And that’s not unique to Boston, or to America... What I saw was the good. And I see it still. It’s all I see.

I've read both of those posts a few times through, and the message of hope I find at the end of each one is sustaining to me.

RED MAPLE

When we planted this red maple
it was barely a foot high,
shorter than a frill of kale.
We'd been married five years.
We dug a little hole and hoped.

This week the snow is finally gone
and we walk the perimeter, unearthing
sandbox toys, faded cars,
plastic tee and bat.
I almost don't recognize the tree:

sprawling gangly, reaching
over my head toward the clouds.
Ten years make a solid foundation
for curled-tight leafbuds, balanced
across branches, ready to burst free.

This poem wasn't written to any prompt; it arose on its own. I wrote it on the 20th day of the Omer, the day of yesod (roots, generativity, foundation) within the week of tiferet (harmony, balance). I had that combination of qualities in mind as I worked on the poem. Hopefully their presence is manifest.

MODERN-DAY GOLEM

When Tony puts on
his Iron Man suit

bright spark of life
pulsing in his chest

does he feel like
the Golem of Prague

rising to the rescue
from the Vltava's banks?

He masters the air
as Loew mastered incantations.

No words are written
above his brown eyes

but if his electromagnet
relaxed its constant humming

all his mechanical strength
would drain away, truth

reverting to death again
as though a thumb

had erased that letter
without which we melt

into the primeval mud
from which we came.

A recent prompt at NaPoWriMo invited the writing of superhero (or supervillain) persona poems. I didn't manage to write in the voice of a superhero, but I did write a poem about one -- actually kind of about two at once, since the poem compares Tony Stark / Iron Man to the Golem of Prague.

In the version of the golem story I know best, Rabbi Loew created the golem out of the mud of the Vltava river and brought him to life using kabbalistic incantations. The golem's task was to protect the Jews of Prague from pogroms. On his forehead was written the word אמת / emet, "truth." When the א was erased, leaving behind מת / met, "death," the golem was turned back into mud.

Tony Stark doesn't have mystical Hebrew letters written on his face; instead he's kept alive by the presence of an arc reactor -- a powerful magnet -- embedded in his chest.

In the face of tragedy, like today's bombings at the Boston Marathon -- a marathon in which the final mile was dedicated to Newtown victims, which somehow makes this all seem even more painful -- how can we respond?

When something awful happens, I think of the passage from Reverend Kate Braestrup which I shared last fall in a sermon for Shabbat Nachamu. God, she says, is not in the disaster; God is not in the car accident; God is not in the bombing. We find God in the love expressed by those who rush to respond: the helping hands, the caring hearts, the first responders who risk their lives to assist those in need.

Reverend Braestrup shares that theology with the venerable Fred Rogers, may his memory be a blessing. (He was a Presbyterian minister, though I didn't know that when I watched his television show as a kid.) I've seen a lot of people sharing a quote from Mr. Rogers today, about how his mama taught him to respond to scary things by looking for the helpers.

Look for the helpers. We find God in those who respond.

God is in the 1200 people who have opened up their homes to stranded runners and travelers in and around Boston today.

In the first responders -- police, EMTs, firefighters, and others -- who rushed not away from the explosions but into them, to help those who were wounded, putting their own lives on the line to aid others.

In those who, according to NBCN, completed the marathon and immediately went to give blood so that the injured could be healed.

In the restaurants (among them Oleana and El Pelon Taqueria) opening their doors, offering a warm meal and a safe place-to-wait to those in need tonight.

In everyone who is caring for those who are wounded and those who are grieving, and those for whom this has been triggering, and those who are afraid.

My prayers are with those who are wounded, those who are grieving, and those who are afraid: in Boston tonight, and in Baghdad, Nasiriyah, and Kirkuk tonight, and everywhere else in the world where people know sorrow and pain. I can't make sense of the loss of life. All I know how to do is hope for healing, and thank the first responders, and find God's presence in the acts of the helpers -- and in every broken heart.

LEDGER

An iphone can't be a palimpsest.
And the old one I used to use,
the one with a crack in the crystal

has lost its second life as a toddler toy --
won't hold a charge anymore
to power zebra or water sounds.

The pale blue onionskin paper
of my mother's red-bound datebook
still crinkles between my fingertips

but who will feel nostalgia
for smudged old screens
once the data has been transferred

to its afterlife
in a shape
we can't yet imagine?

This poem was written to the "address book" prompt at 30/30 poetry.

I haven't had a paper address book in years, nor a paper datebook, though I remember the way they used to get written-on and overwritten, outdated data scrawled-over, marginalia sprouting like mushrooms after a rain.

MAKE A POEM OUT OF THAT

If you can't make a poem out of that,
she said, I'll be disappointed --

but I've forgotten what
the raw materials were: our visit

to the Ghanaian cobbler
with racks of dusty shoe polish tins?

The international market
with the forlorn plastic Santa

in the window, boxes of fufu
and Goya tinned mackerel on the shelves?

Maybe it was the blackboards, chalked
with the names of spring beers.

Cartoon stars soaring and twirling.
The little boy, jumping with glee.

This poem wasn't written to any particular prompt. Instead it arose out of an afternoon's errands in Pittsfield.

TANKA TRIO AT FORTY-ONE MONTHS

1.

He watches Dora,
Talks back to the screen with glee
Calls her his new friend
Someday he'll know she's not real --
My heart will break a little.

2.

The blanket sleeper
Adorned with smiling snowmen
Lies limp, discarded.
This house feels too quiet without
His three-year-old energy.

3.

Careen down the slide
Clutching Bear beneath one arm.
Galoshes touch earth.
Someday you'll sail into air
And land in your own grown life.

This was written for the Day Eleven challenge at NaPoWriMo, which invited each of us to write a tanka. This is another syllabic form; the classic American tanka contains lines of 5 / 7 / 5/ 7 / 7 syllables, and often the last couplet takes the poem in a new direction or casts new light on the first part of the poem. I worked again with the recurring theme of parenting our three-year-old, and this is what emerged.

The challah is hidden beneath the animal-print cloth, a challah cover made from a potential nursery fabric reject. The wine, juice, and candles are obvious. What's perhaps less obvious is why there's a laptop open on the table: so we can Skype with my parents in Texas while we say the blessings over candles, wine, challah, and the kiddo.

I close the priestly blessing with the line asking God to bring our son peace, and he still tears off a corner of challah and says solemnly "and the last thing we bless is, I ask God to give you a piece," and hands me some more bread. I know he won't do it forever (he's already outgrown some of his early malapropisms) but I so love that he does it now.

And I love that the miracle of Skype allows me to share that with my parents week after week.

Shabbat shalom to all!

WHAT GETS IN THE WAY

Whatever gets in the way of the work
might be the roasting pan from last night's chicken
aswirl now with suds and schmaltz.

Might be the yellow pansies nodding bravely
in the window box outside the coffee shop.
The bitter dregs of coffee in a big white cup.

It might be the half-remembered dream
of ice floes, furlined coat, the little bird
vibrating like a beating heart in my hand.

It might be the little boy on Thomas sheets
who's thrown every single stuffed animal out of bed
and is waiting for me to intuit that he's alone.

What gets in the way of the work is this cold wind
whipping past my leather jacket to kiss my neck.
The daffodil-bright sign at the VFW.

And I'm blessed to gather this armful of images
and stitch them together with blue thread, because
whatever gets in the way of the work is the work

and whatever gets in the way of this day
is this day that the Lord has made:
let us rejoice and write poems in it.

This daily April poem wasn't written to any particular prompt. I stared for a while at my empty text window, waiting for an idea, and what came to me was the mantra I learned from my teacher Jason Shinder, of blessed memory: "Whatever gets in the way of the work, is the work." (I've written about that many times before.) That's what gave rise to this poem.

NEW IN TOWN

A bright morning
on a hillside
that doesn't keep
a single secret.

The wind dances
the leafless trees
side to side.
They hum aloud.

The repeated thud:
a hapless robin
who doesn't know
to avoid windows.

Here and there
tiny green shoots
mark the spots
where crocuses begin.

An ant investigates
the venetian blinds.
Ladybugs stroll silently
along the sill.

Spring's the dame
who winks merrily
short skirt fluttering
over long legs.

And we, punchdrunk
on her proximity
fall over ourselves
to invite her in.

Tuesday's prompt at NaPoWriMo invited us to write poems inspired by noir. I narrowly resisted the urge to attempt something about Veronica Mars, and instead wound up with a short poem about the leggy lady who's got everyone's heart aflutter around these parts. The opening stanza is a riff off of Garrison Keilor's Guy Noir bit on Prairie Home Companion.

WETLAND ASHREI

Pass old cornstalks, the sukkah's sad debris.
The wetland's dull, dead stalks washed out by snow
but some stems gleam with red. What vibrancy,
the gold-as-tinsel fronds of the willow.
Grey pussywillows' pearls, woodsy jewelry
against this backdrop where no leaves yet grow.
Happy are we who make Your house our home!
Birdsong fills this robin's-egg-blue dome.

Monday's prompt at NaPoWriMo invited us to experiment with ottava rima, an Italian verse form which usually appears, in English, as eight-line stanzas in iambic pentameter with an a/b/a/b/a/b/c/c rhyme scheme. I wrote mine on a short afternoon break from work before Hebrew school on Monday. I stepped outside the synagogue and sat with my laptop in the small gazebo, and the poem arose out of what I observed in the small wetland behind the shul.

The penultimate line is a reference to the ashrei prayer, which begins "Happy are they who dwell in Your house." (I first blogged about that prayer here in 2004, and did so again in 2007.) Traditionally Jews daven the ashrei three times a day, one of those times being mincha, the short afternoon prayer service. (Writing this poem became my mincha for Monday.)

MORNING WITH THREE-YEAR-OLD

Our son stands in the doorway in bear pyjamas.
A soft blue teddy peeks from under his arm.
His cheeks are scaly with the night's dried snot.
He clambers into our bed and squirms onto my pillow.
This smile, sweet as strawberries, is just for me.

He cups my face with his grubby palm.
I brush his hair back from his forehead.
Small feet probe my ribs, testing boundaries.
Soon he is poking my mouth, covering my eyes.
Deep breath: I roll to sitting, I enfold in my robe.

We pad down the stairs holding hands.
Unzip the blanket sleeper, yank the nighttime diaper.
Our struggle for dominance evokes the Nature Channel.
I manage to aim his feet into sweatpants and socks.
I yield and relinquish my hopes of a clean shirt.

Finally I reach the Promised Land.
The refrigerator hums its quiet song.
Clean pots weigh down the dish drainer.
I stand in the middle of the floor, waiting.
Does a watched coffee pot refuse to boil?

Sunday's NaPoWriMo prompt invited us to write poems in which each line is a short declarative sentence, and the final line is a question. In response to that prompt, I wrote this poem on Sunday morning, sipping coffee while our son watched cartoons. I have two versions of it: one where the poem is all one long stanza, and another where the poem is broken into 5-line stanzas. I think I like this version better, but I'm still not sure.

There's a way in which this is a sequel to the Toddler House poems I was writing a while back -- and a way in which those were the next chapter of the weekly mother poems I wrote during my first year of motherhood.

I spent some of last week proofreading the digital galleys of Waiting to Unfold, due out from Phoenicia Publishing in a few weeks. I'm so grateful now to have those poems -- and to have a publisher who's excited about bringing them into the world. Anyway: stay tuned for more intel on that collection!

PROJECTS

Tiny trebuchet, sized
for dolls or possibly hobbits,
chucked eggs halfway down the hill.

We counterpoised our second try
with free weights, strong enough
to loft pumpkins.

For a finale we pondered
air cannons to send buckets of paint
soaring into the valley

strangers waking to find
their houses garbed in unfamiliar
technicolor dreamcoats, but

by then we were building
round Mongolian dwellings
out of sticks and string instead.

What the neighbors thought
as gers sprouted like slow mushrooms
atop our hill, we'll never know

as they'll never know
how lucky they are we got bored
and let their house stay blue.

This was written to the 30/30 prompt "valley."

We never really intended to build the air cannon, but it made for fun conversations. (And yes, this is the kind of thing our circle of friends does for fun when we get together -- we make things. For a few years, there were trebuchets.)

Ger is the Mongolian word for what most of us know as a yurt. Starting in 2004, we built one in our backyard every winter with friends for many years. Last year we got one from Mongolia, which has replaced the various iterations we built. (For more on that: Loving the ger, May 2012.)

CINQUAIN FOR A CARDINAL

Redbird
atop the pine:
you sing that liquid tune
my mother's mother used to love.
Don't stop.

For the fifth day of National Poetry Month, the folks at NaPoWriMo challenged us to write a cinquain. So I wrote this poem on Friday, but am only posting it today, since on Friday I posted a poem derived from a 30/30 prompt instead.

A cinquain is a tightly-constrained form. It has five lines. The first line has two syllables (one of which is accented), the second line four syllables (and two accents), the third line six syllables (three accents), the fourth line eight syllables (four accents), and the fifth line two syllables (and one accent) again.

Mine was inspired by the cardinal I've been seeing when I arrive at the synagogue in the mornings. Cornell tells me that these are year-round birds both here and where I grew up. Lately he's been perched at the top of one of the trees near our building, singing lustily when I arrive at work. I love that these brilliant birds, which were a part of my south Texas childhood, live here in New England too.

ETA: Now available in my chapbook April Daily.