Time

It's time to bring the potted plants indoors.
It's time to find the wooden crate of socks

and figure out which ones are pairs. To use
the bundt pan Mona handed down to me

for apple cake; to look up how I roasted
delicata squash last year. It's time

to pause the New York Times again, to frame
the tweet from Kelli Agodon that says,

"Write poetry instead of doomscrolling."
It's time to take the sukkah down, return

the decorations to their bin, and watch
crabapples reddening across the field.

It's time to place my trust in what endures,
seek sleepy comfort in the growing dark.

 


 

Apple cake. Apples and honey are a symbolic food at the Jewish new year. (I'm partial to Deb's mom's apple cake.)

The tweet from Kelli Agodon. See it here.

What endures. See my most recent blog post.


Anew

Screen Shot 2021-08-03 at 5.12.58 PM

Here’s the thing: the year begins anew
even in the worst of times. The leaves
will turn and fall and then they’ll grow again.
And sometimes we’re afraid, and we can’t know
what choice to make to keep anyone safe.
Uncertainty’s a bear. All we can do
is seek out sweetness everywhere we may
and work to fix what brokenness we find.
The good news is we’re not in this alone.
We’ll help each other hope when light seems dim
and lift the sparks that darker days reveal.
We’ll love each other fiercely: in the end
there is no greater work that we can do.
We who survive will help each other heal.

 

This is the poem I sent to friends and family as an Elul message / new year's card this year. (It's also part of an ad hoc series, along with this sonnet.) You can find all of my new year's poems here.


Sonnet for our second COVID Rosh Hashanah

I don't want to reckon with my choices:
feels like that's all we've done for 18 months
(should I mask, is this safe, what if
we meet outside and never breathe together?)
I don't want to query who will live
and who will die, who by wildfire and who
by flooded subway, who intubated and alone
and who will have enough while others lack.
I just want all of us to thrive: our hearts
at ease, our hopes in reach at last.
Come close to me, God. Comfort me with apples.
Remind me the world is born again each year --
even if I'm not ready, even if this year
I'm not sure I know the words to pray.

 

 

Reckon with my choices. The lunar month of Elul, which begins in a few days, launches the season of teshuvah, repentance and return; the inner work of this time is looking at who we are and who we've been, where we've missed the mark, how we can repair what's broken in our relationships with each other, the world, and our Source. Who will live / and who will die, who by fire and who by water... The Unetaneh Tokef prayer, which we recite on Rosh Hashanah, asks this question. (Here's a post I wrote about it a while back if you want to know more.) Wildfires and flooded subways come from recent news. Come close to me, God. Tradition holds that during the month of Elul, "the King is in the Field" -- the transcendent sovereign aspect of God, usually distant from us, is with us / near us / accessible to us.  Comfort me with apples. From Song of Songs 2:5. Apples dipped in honey are also a traditional food for Rosh Hashanah -- "sweet foods for a sweet year." The world is born again. One of the prayers of Rosh Hashanah reminds us that hayom harat olam, "today the world is born." On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the ongoing renewal of creation.


Change

1.

The CSA's first distribution week:
the flower gardent nascent, not yet formed.
The fields are all potential. No one knows
what plagues or pleasures yet will come to pass.
Who can say which plants will thrive this year?
This week the share's all leaves in shades of green:
tatsoi, arugula, yokatta na.
Atop my bag I nestle precious roots:
French radishes, like fingers, long and pink.
Pick up a pen to mark that I was here
on this first week in June, the season's cusp.
My name's listed alone, while his is paired.
The tears that come I blink away, and blame
upon the radishes' surprising bite.

 

2.

Clouds of pearly fluff float through the air
revealing hidden currents. Poplar seeds,
each with a silken parachute: they twirl,
make visible the breeze that strokes my neck.
I'm floating too, buoyed sometimes by forces
I can't see. Other times I feel
discarded by the tree that once was home.
Every breath I take's an act of trust
that in time I'll land, and root myself
in unfamiliar soil I can't yet know.
Can I learn to love being so light
I no longer insist I'm in control?
"God was not in the cloud: the still small voice..."
I wait, and drift, and listen for its sound.

Continue reading "Change" »


Wake to you


I want to wake to you. When my alarm pulls me
(a silvered trout, struggling, from sleep's stream)

you remind me I breathe air, can thrive. Your song
calls forth my own. I'm a tuning fork, vibrating.

When my walls crumble and fall, you show me what stays.
Point out that shrinking myself won't keep me safe.

You take delight in my strength, urge me: be more.
You don't want artifice. You exult when I shine.

When I relinquish control at the end of the day
and slip into sleep you keep me safe and seen.

In dreams I give you the keys to my secret places
but you don't need them: my door is open to you.

You know my true name. You know my tender heart,
the path into my garden where roses bloom.

 


 

This is another poem in my ongoing Texts to the Holy series.

I had fun with meter in this one; it's not exactly in iambic pentameter (though some lines are), but on the whole the lines have five stresses apiece, which is something that emerged in an early draft and then I chose to play with. Also, though the original draft was longer, it now has the same number of lines as a sonnet. Though right now I'm keeping it in couplets, I'm considering whether I prefer the visual prosody of four quatrains and a couplet instead.

I'm a tuning fork, vibrating. I love the fact of sympathetic resonance, both as a metaphor and as a reality. 

When the walls crumble, you show me what stays. See my recent post Entering Av.

[T]he path into my garden hints at the beginning of chapter 5 of Song of Songs. (By the way: Reb Zalman z"l wrote a beautiful melodic setting of those verses, which you can hear in this video from Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, a congregation I was blessed to visit this past spring.) 

[W]here roses bloom. The Zohar is rife with images of roses and rose gardens, and associates them with Shechinah, the immanent, indwelling, feminine Presence of God.


Daily April poem - a love poem


TO MY HAGGADAH

Over the years your staples have slipped
and pages loosened. Here a faded purple crescent
of ancient wine, there a smudge
from bricks of date paste.
But when you speak I swoon. Tell me again
how we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt
but the Holy One brought us out from there
with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
Sing to me of unleavened bread, of parsley
dipped in bitter tears. Remind me
if I wait until I feel fully ready
I might never leap at all. Waltz me giddy
through psalms of praise. Promise me
next year a world redeemed.

 


Today's prompt at NaPoWriMo invites the writing of a love poem to an inanimate object. I chose the object which is the primary focus of my attention this week as Pesach approaches: my haggadah.

The first draft naturally came to sixteen lines; when I printed it out and read it aloud, I realized that if I tightened it a little bit I could get it down to a sonnet's fourteen lines, so that's what I did. Though it doesn't rhyme and has no meter, it's loosely based around the Petrarchan sonnet form -- it breaks naturally into eight lines followed by six lines.

I do love the haggadah. All of them. Every version, every iteration, from the most traditional to the most avant-garde. Variations on a theme which never fails to stir my heart. My favorite holiday is almost here!

Napo2014button1