To End is Only To Begin Again
endings dwell in beginnings,
time continues, but
infinite hours remain beyond
my province—
there is yet time
to repair the places where
seams loosened and junctures
separated, where frayed spots
grew thin—
time to walk toward another
extend a hand
and begin to patch
to mend
to repair
to repent
Love
“Tell me, you who my soul loves... 1:7
“...and my insides stirred.” 5:4
Song of Songs
In the midst of scripture—a love poem
A paean to sensual delights
An invitation to love generously
I, too, feel my body shift and stir
as I whisper the lines
“I am my beloved’s,
and my beloved is mine...”
Dare
I remember when
the best swimmer at the “Y”
dared me to swim
two pool lengths underwater
I tried over and over
until a game of Marco Polo
changed the subject
Now I read and read
translation after translation
looking for a lens to
understand each psalm
I dare myself to reimagine
the words as mine
I am David
I am each person
who wraps herself in words,
crossing out
adding
until the psalm is mine
Understand
After watching
the Republican National Convention
I can’t understand
the accolades, the praise
the parade of toadies
the lies, the painting
of the other as dangerous
How do they excuse lies
How do they defend
twisted words, a rewrite of reality
Don’t they hear the sound of steel boots
Don’t they know history
Don’t they hear screaming rhetoric,
repetition of words, of framing
the other with symbols of fear
I hear the footfalls
What don’t they see
What don’t they hear
What don’t they understand
about where we are heading
Their vision ignores the signposts
Pray
I listen to G-D’s voice
when wind brushes against grass,
when waves gather momentum
before spending their foam
on a shore dotted with Sandpipers
I see G-D’s hand in orange and red
hoodoos reaching upward—
becoming a cathedral of spires
I stretch my hand until my fingers
touch layers
of sandstone, shale, and limestone—
a story two billion years old
I inhale the aroma of rain washed herbs
I pray to this G-d of creation
Learn
Listen to silence
and hear the past
View abandoned junctures
buried under slabs of time
that haunt the present
and wait for light,
for a chance to shake
off layers of neglect
Change
Summer creeps toward autumn
muting her colors, bringing a descent
of light, a rush toward dusk
Yet, a few days stay behind
unwilling to keep step
They capture summer’s warmth,
a reprieve, a chance to linger
Remember
Before—
always before
Looking backwards
to recall a time before the now
A palmist reads shapes and lines,
hand shapes, fingernails, texture of skin
to create a text of what story remains
Scripture retells a narrative,
a history of a people, a key to remember
our ancestors
Forgive
To forgive
does not mean to forget
or blot out from memory
Some words remain
Some actions stay embedded
To forgive
does not mean to issue a free pass
or to engage in magic thinking
To me it means that I will
not carry around a lodestone
weighing me down
I will forgive words and actions
but it doesn’t mean I will respect
or condone or not call out
I will not wait for you to ask
for forgiveness
It will be a free gift
A gift I will accept as well
Trust
In a temperate zone
it is a cycle of promises—
spring will appear and wipe
away reminders of winter—
the pile of snow that resists melting,
icicles hanging off the roof edge
and bushes bent from the weight of winter
Spring is not happenstance
nor a fortunate phenomenon
or based on mathematical probability
nor the rermedy for Demeter’s
design for winter—instead
spring is woven from
the thread of creation
Count
Each day I count my tomatoes,
check to see a change from green
When I walk up and down hills
my watch counts my steps, my pulse
rate, distance in miles, time—
It keeps a record of my longest walk,
my speed—even calories used
If I count those times,
I let myself down—an errant word,
hyperbole, a reconstructed story
with missing parts, and the times I
looked away, invisible to myself—
too busy to count the hollow
places in need of repair
