ASPIRATIONS
My one god is not a god of one truth only. Make of your ear a hopper, the teacher said
Moths rise from my blanket, fly from my tongue. Still, I aspire to be kind and patient
If I had an olive tree, she would be my mother, my steadfastness. I would protect her from those who would do her harm
The blue world falters. Rockets pummel the dusty streets
I close my eyes and remember a dialog of fingers, the taste of a lover’s tongue
How we argued about everything, the sky, moths, the nature of human nature
How the blue world falters. Sonar strands pods of dolphins, their glossy eyes go dim
The shadow of a nipple clouds the x-ray of a lung
I lay me down
I become my olive tree. My limbs send out rootlets
I attend to the body’s language and the words of the sages to acquire a discerning heart
THEREFORE I WILL BE QUIET, COMFORTED THAT I AM DUST
Whenever I think of Job I see him sitting against a limestone wall in a filthy tunic
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are plying him with simplistic arguments, variants of It’s your fault
Job’s crops are blighted, his children dead, his body wracked with boils and sores
He is raking the sky with anguish. His flute is tuned to the sound of tears
What Job wants is a word with the Unnamable
to ask the old question: What is the purpose of suffering? What did I do that I should suffer so?
At last, the Unnamable sweeps in on a whirlwind
reminding Job of who ushers in light and dark, who made the animal kingdom in all its wild perfection
Look, He says, and Job does, as He describes the first creature He made to be His plaything,
the Beast who sleeps under the lotus, who chews clubs to splinters and makes the oceans boil
Hope is a lie, says the Unnamable. Job goes silent, clapping a hand to his mouth
This could be where we enter, who may not have expected reward but perhaps not so much suffering either
Neither believers nor disbelievers, not expecting answers yet still chafing against what has befallen
who once more need reminding of our miniscule place in the astonishing order of things
unable to stifle the hope that rises each day in our throats
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B’REISHIT
In the beginning created God, with a who at the end of the question
Who is like unto you in glory. Who being the name of
The holy interrogative, first person inquisitive
The earth breathed I and God unfolded in our throats
Inner and audible word
Himself mapping a plain that stretched to the end of the comprehensible
A physicist might love the Kabbala, its black holes and emanations
Its separations and convergences, its out of Nothings, its unto Nothings, through wormholes to the other side
My love, who once was, out of Nothing, Something unfolding, no longer enjoys a paradox, a question whose answer is a question
Folds back again to Nothing
Softly, like petals falling
Into the arms of the Shekhinah
The beauty who has lost her eyes
In a city where Something was coming to Nothing, a man sat among the old suq’s bright woven textiles
He asked me, Who will give us names
His people call themselves the Humans of the Lost City
A question that leads to a question
GRIEF
A cachectic woman shuffles into the infusion center on the arm of her son
A demented man floats through the memory center in a cone of silence
If every day I worship at the altar of my grief, who is it I am true to
Father, mother, now another
I study the woman’s bones and dark eye sockets and realize she’s a mirror
I study my love’s expression, looking to prise out what’s inside
A fingertip touches my throat
We are grass in a windstorm
If Someone touches my throat
If Something breaks and smiles, offers the gift of tongues
If Someone appears and averts the sacrifice
If Someone dwells over the sick man’s bed and slides into his body
If Someone inscribes the commandments with a fingertip of fire
Father, mother, and now another, grief is my sister and my brother
If a breeze stirs the sedge grass by the marsh
If a face arrives from the whirlwind calling itself indwelling
Not through gloom, nor through sloth, nor through levity or idle chatter
If the Shekhinah arrives and averts the sacrifice
If a wind with a face that speaks says build my dwelling here
Then I will remember joy
Then I will enter the sick man’s body
I am a citizen of this republic
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