yom kippur 5778

Arm around my mother

Hearing psalm 148 for the first time

We are falling asleep in the sermon

I am coming home in the verses.

Boy, it's hot in a tallis and your father’s sport coat

Boy, it’s sad when we speak a thousand names at once

For kaddish.

Boy, we’ve got a lot of arguing to do,

This family.

These are the holidays of the new moon.

This is rejuvenation.

But mostly, I feel the spokes

Of the wheel; when I rap my chest

And sing, it hurts. She cried.

He went to bed unheard. They

Exhausted themselves talking.

They aren’t going to get it,

At least not from me. Marks missed.

Not like clouds in the sun at all.

My dry tongue is that I have not spoken.

And my legs quaking is the gutless way

To use conversation for power. And the sweat

Running down my back is the river of doubt

I harbor. And my swollen hands.

The chives on my breath. White scalp.

Isn’t it beautiful? My whole body alive

With sin, reminding every second

What it must do for love, what it must do

Not just to stay alive but to remain ALIVE.

When we call, we talk without talking.

I say I feel a painful god, and you say good.

You say you can’t hear me, it’s too much like confessional.

Here is the bud of the root, and the root of the bud,

Here is the cold april rain for which there is no jacket,

Here is the branch holding on outside your bedroom window

That knows our love defies simple laws like death:

Your foul weathered love makes me want the ocean.

Your sunblue eyes cool me, watch me pant

Naked on your floor with nothing in my hands.

I have to run to snatch you up

When I see you praying beside the bed,

Or trying to find your WE folder,

Or putting on pants.

I am sorry I have ever hurt you.