Open My Lips

Nisan: Changing

    before Pesach

This is a story about change.
Look: the seas are parting.
It's happening now. Open your eyes.

We were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt
but God brought us out of there.
This is a story about change.

The womb which had kept us alive
became constricting.
It's happening now. Open your eyes.

It's time to forget our anxieties
and leap off the precipice.
This is a story about change.

Even God is all about change —
I Am Becoming Who I Am Becoming.
It's happening now. Open your eyes.

The moon is almost full
to light our wanderings.
This is a story about change.
It's happening now. Open your eyes.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon. 

Meditation on removing leaven

    the night before Pesach

What does it mean to remove chametz
when my cupboard overflows
with toddler-friendly goldfish
and mini-muffins? If there is

any chametz I do not know about
— odds are good there are stale O's
in the crevices of the car seat,
but the rest of our leaven is

in plain sight, soft whole-wheat
awaiting jam's unfurling —
that I have not seen or removed,
I disown it. That part

of the formula at least still works.
An invisible line: between
his english muffins, his toasted bread
and my boxes of matzah, waiting.

Even if I don't light a candle
Ribbono shel Olam, help me
to sweep the crumbs from even
the ill-tended corners of my heart.

The too-sour puffery of ego,
the impulse in me that needs
to be in charge, needs to be right,
needs to be praised. The part of me

that forgets the daily importance
of prayer and kindness. I disown it.
I declare it to be nothing
as ownerless as the dust of the earth.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon. 

Freedom

    for Pesach; in remembrance of the Arab Spring

Liberation comes when people gather
by the tens and by the thousands

demanding that the despot who's held the reins
step down, and in between the slogans

they dish out lentils cooked over open flame,
and homes open up so the protestors can shower

and members of one faith link hands
to protect members of another faith at prayer.

Liberation comes at a cost: not only
the horses and chariots swept away, but

innocents gunned down by their own army,
panicked children lost in the roiling crowds

activists imprisoned for speaking freely,
and when the world stops watching

they may be beaten — or worse.
It's upon us to at least pay attention

on mobile phones and computer screens
as real people rise up to say

we have the right to congregate and to speak
we will not be silenced, we are not afraid.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon. 

Order

Breakfast on kosher macaroons and Diet Pepsi
in the car on the way to Price Chopper for lamb.

Peel five pounds of onions and let the Cuisinart
shred them while you push them down and weep.

Call your mother because you know she’s preparing
too, because you want to ask again whether she cooks

matzah balls in salted water or broth, because you can.
Crumble boullion cubes like clumps of wet sand.

Remember the precise mixing order, beating
then stirring then folding, so that for one moment

you can become your grandfather.
Remember the year he taught you this trick

not the year his wife died scant weeks before seder
and he was already befuddled when you came home.

Realize that no matter how many you buy
there are never quite enough eggs at Pesach

especially if you need twelve for the kugel
and eighteen for the kneidlach and another dozen

to hardboil and dip in bowls of stylized tears.
Know you are free! What loss. What rejoicing.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon. 

Meditation on Counting the Omer

We mark the Omer day
by day, spring unfolding light
as snowflakes in the breeze. One
follows another; we measure each week
of this dusty journey through
wild unknowing. Come and count.

Time to make our qualities count.
The kaleidoscope shifts every day,
each dawn a lens that God shines through.
What in me will be revealed as light
streams into me each week?
Seven colors of the rainbow make one

beam of white. God is One
and God's in everything we count.
Lovingkindness permeates the first week,
then boundaries, harmony, each day
a different lens for light
to warm our hearts as it glows through.

And when the Omer count is through?
We'll stand at Sinai, every one
— every soul that's ever been — light
as Chagall's floating angels. Count
with me, and treasure each day.
A holy pause caps every week.

Endurance comes into play: week
four. We wonder, will we make it through?
Humility and splendor in a single day,
two opposites folded into one.
Roots strengthen us as we count.
Every day, more work to do and stronger light.

Torah is black fire on white, light
of our lives. In the seventh week
time warps and ripples as we count.
Kingship and presence come through,
transcendence and immanence bundled as one,
wholly revealed on the forty-ninth day...

Feel the light now pouring through.
Each week the seven sefirot become one.
It's time to count the Omer, now, today.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon. 

Longing (for Shavuot)

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.

Help me be awake
to Your presence.
I want to sing holy at dawn
with the birds
in the willow behind shul
who open and close each day
with praise.

 

 

Please support independent publishing and buy a copy of the book if you can: Open My Lips at the Ben Yehuda Press website, Open My Lips at Amazon.