Open My Lips

(My) Psalm 151

I have learned to see Your voice
in ink on parchment
words filligreed with crowns
holy interpretations sparking forth

help me, God
to hear Your voice echoing
through the vocal chords of those
who sit on my couch

help me find You in the lives
of my beloved friends; help me find You
in the bitter alongside the sweet
and to name You there

I yearn  to offer the question
which will make Your presence
suddenly, delightfully
manifest

like the warmth
of a fire kindled against the damp
or the joy of unexpected music
resonating deep in our bones

 

 

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Six psalms of praise: Hallel

1. 
   
   (113)
   
   Yesterday's sleet has melted: I offer praise
   the sky is a perfect eggshell: I offer praise
   
   my husband has taken the baby out of the house
   freeing me to wrap myself in rainbow silk
   
   to squint into the sun and sing psalms
   I offer praise
   
   
   2. (114)
   
   let all offer praise
   to what brings us forth from constriction
   when we remember to say thank you
   the hills and horizon dance
   
   
   3. (115)
   
   You spun the heavens on Your unthinkable loom
   and fashioned the elements of creation with Your deft hands
   
   the heavens are Yours
   but the earth is in our keeping
   
   the dead can't praise, but we can
   help us remember
   
   
   4. (116)
   
   I yearn to serve
   as my ancestors yearned to serve
   
   you have loosened
   the cords around my heart
   
   
   5. (117)
   
   let every nation wake up, seized
   by the yearning to praise
   
   help us manifest mercy and truth
   both are Yours
   
   
   6. (118)
   
   let gratitude well up like water
        lovingkindness is forever
   let my community call forth
        lovingkindness is forever
   let all who marry fear and awe call forth
        lovingkindness is forever
   
   from the straits of depression I have called out
   You answer me with heart wide as the fields
   
   open Your gates for me
   I yearn to enter and give thanks
   
   help me know that what was rejected in me
   is cornerstone for something new
   
   this day, right here, was shaped by You
   I want to rejoice in it
   
   Dear One, bring us salvation
   bring us Your help
   
   You give us light; in return we imagine
   festival processions, our arms full of branches
   
   bless all who come in Your name
        lovingkindness is forever 

 

 

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Psalm of the Sky

    for those who dwell in uncertainty


You are my parachute
I will not fall

in Your arms I float easy
and the air buoys me

I can do backflips, I can wave
to my fellow skydivers

I can sink into unknowing
without freezing

though I have no idea
how distant the ground

or where I will land
I am not afraid

Your silent presence
comforts me

when You dance with me
I forget to feel ungainly

You will cradle me
all the days of my life

spin with me
in the stratosphere forever

 

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. 

Psalm of Wonder

   

I boast I grew a baby
from component cells. Big deal:

You built the cosmos
from component atoms, and those

have moving parts which shift,
performing particle or wave.

As photons yearn for the void
my heart yearns for You

though when we meet
I disappear.

When I ascend the ladder
I understand entanglement

though when I fall back down
my human brain can't grasp

the endless ein-sof
of Your quantum fields.


for R' Fern Feldman and Dr. Karen Barad

 

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. 

Winter Psalm

The wind whips spirals of snow
dervishes dancing across icy asphalt

snowplows call out to one another
backing up to ply their routes again

the atmosphere looms, pregnant
with the promise of precipitation

and I? I scatter handfuls of cat litter
across the driveway's uneven terrain

casting prayers for the safe passage
of all who come, and all who go

 

 

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. 

Seven Reasons (Psalm 147)

You rebuild your city with our hands
and gather our scattered sparks.
You darn the heels of our hearts
and comfort us with bandages.

You smear sunrise across the heavens
like raspberry jam
and coax every blade of grass
to emerge from the dark comfort of soil.

And you love our fragility
not our particle physics
nor the bridges we labored to plant
across the inlets your glaciers carved.

You lay down ice like glass
and frost like lace on our windowpanes
and then you breathe a January thaw
and our frozen places melt.

 

 

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. 

Psalm of Parenthood

Mother of all, remake me
in Your image. Make me as noble
as the daffodils nodding graciously.
Root me in my generations.
Help me hold on to the splendor
my son sees when he runs toward me
at the end of a schoolday.
Give me the flannel-soft patience
for one more board book, one more cartoon.
Help me to balance the scales
of work and child
gentleness and strength.
Reinforce my boundaries
so I never confuse my child's issues
with my own.
Enlarge my ribcage
to encompass this overflowing love.

 

 

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Nishmat Kol Chai: The Breath of All Life

    for Shabbat morning

Breath of our bodies
and harmattan of our ambitions

hurricane of our angers
and chinook of our forgiveness

tempest of our childbirths
and cold front of our silences

articulated gasp of pain
and muffled sigh of pleasure

inbreath of my housecat
and outbreath of every tree

gust that reshapes coastlines
and tempest of our hearts

wind of the physical world
and the realms of emanation beyond

Breath of All Life, the breath
of all life blesses Your name.

If every mouth joined right now
in breathing Your praises

if every present thing on earth
stopped so we could laud You

if we all shared the roaring voice
of lion and elephant and walrus,

the heightened senses
of the mystic and the hunting owl

if we could fly like the Concorde
looping your smoky name across the sky

if we could discard differences: human,
animal, fire, stone, seed, snow

even that cry of togetherness
would not be enough to thank You.

 

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.