Back to us

As we enter a new season, 

We think we are saying goodbye to some part of us 

Forever.

But, look

See how he brings our whole selves back to us.

On having a new job in the modern age

Illusion: the perfect structure exists, and I just have to find it,

Perfection disintegrating into procrastination 

Floundering in notebooks, calendars, spreadsheets, docs, notes, 

which device, stored on site, Dropbox, drive, flash, cloud; html or file?) 

Will I log this in Excel, Trello, Onenote, Slack? 

Digitized, scattered, lavishly sprawled across the landscape of logins, passwords, 

All caught up in inconsistent effort and cascading semantics  

Eventually, what will be made is made, and habits formed 

And (hopefully) refined and improved. 

Otherwise, forgotten. 

October moon

Trace the yellow tide- boundaring the glory of the sugar maple

Lately transformed into a golden orb 

Branches extending around the brightening icey sky

The apex culminating with the waning harvest moon

A woven basket of light 

A peerless smile

Landing Haikus

 July 9
This is where time starts
To begin again means to
Depart the old way

11
Eleven months is
Too long and not enough: tick
Tock: Love is always

Left behind (1)
The greater the loss
The more you loved, so they say
Multi-verse at play

Left behind (2)
To be left
Is not to be lost
Don't forget

Grammar
If 'to be' does not
Exist in the present, do
I exist at all?

Vows
Bring them home!
Billboards vow never
Forget/give

Home
Love flowing
Between latitudes
Home expands 

+8 GMT
Daylight comes
To you first I'm in
The dark waiting

Show me your face

Fateful day, long awaited 

With dreams fortelling 

Regrets mounting; 

Unattended death

Abandoned life

Unattuned presence

Neglected nurture

Fatigued compassion

Unchained melody 

Crooked comedy 

Unhinged guilt

Aching disharmony 

Fumbling with grief

Is this a tragedy or this a relief?

I will make it to the end if I can just see your face. 

Anvil

Forging strength 

Struck against the hard 

Hope’s weapon 

 *haiku from The NY Times Wordle 

Intimacy

Communion and oneness

Softness and toughness

Touch and timing

Intimacy is being with

Within, knowing

Is closeness and seeing, into

Seeking understanding

Naked and safely seen

Vulnerably exposed, 

Receiving and accepting, all.

Giving for the good of the other, 

The higher and further 

The now and not yet, 

The forever. 

Threshing the hold

As I depart,

Even as I enter,

The expanse expanding

The excitement and fear combining

This host of emotions, 

grieving and welcoming

Threshold crossings

Moments of holding on, 

of always being held.

Ebbing glow

From my bedroom I hear birds chirping, waking up. Sunrise in 34 minutes. 

I write, picturing the dusty blue of pre dawn veiling the crispness of night, picturing groping in the dusk to the raspberry patch, collecting first fruits of July, in tears of remembering my bodily longing for this moment of tactile revelation from afar; the gentle tug of the plump berry in to my hand, marveling at the oblong perfection, the splash of color on my mouth.

The sweetness of fulfilled longings tinged with the holy grief that seasons end. That closeness will ebb due to the limitations of time zones and presence and capacity, the slow dance of holding and releasing. 

Patient habits

We are going to live with aching exuberance
We are going to exult in our famished spirits
We are going to wonder and awe until we get new names
We are going to rest and release
We are going to protect and punish
We are going backward so we can go forward
We are battling and lovemaking, stopping and sprinting
The heat is rising; I contemplate contempt but I relapse into forgiveness instead; it’s a habit 

Ringed

 I always thought I would look down at my ringed finger, relieved and secure in my knowledge of being chosen 

Instead I find comfort in his ringed finger, Moved by his sign of commitment, more than my own token.

And finding that even this monumental human commitment feels small and fragile, certain as we can be in our unknowingness;

And that the creator’s steadfast covenant is the truer foundation, where I built my life in years of waiting, a true home never to depart from.

Falling

There are things falling from the sky, some are petals and some are knives, words that cut and divide. Some are tears from eyes like fountains, uncorked from Jeremiah’s cousins. Some are missile shards and shrapnel, freshly mailed from Persia, hastening Armageddon. 

So then on the plain of Meiggdio we will wait and wail, remembering good king Josiah. Armed with tears and promises, until the better king appears and his enemies vanquishes.

Living under heaven

Eyes swelling with tears since the missiles and drones claimed the skies, cascading in a dance between borderlands. Returning to work is what we do, we are strong people. So resilient we are calcified by self protection and singular lenses for survival, biblical prophesies pronounced with every strike.

Jerusalem, I weep for you and for myself. 

In wartime you can slip and fall from the tears that recite Jeremiah’s words, “my eyes are a fountain.” They never stop falling, they are the remnant of shrapnel, yearning for gravity to release their tense pools. 

In the spring you can slip and fall on the Jerusalem stones, slick with rain, and in the dry summer you slip and fall as the sweat rolls down your back, your legs, pooling and glossing the pavement. 

Still, in Jerusalem I am loved, not because my name passed his lips. Or because he declares my breasts will always satisfy him, budlike and tender. I am loved because I exist on purpose, and that is irrevocable. Isn’t the very existence of this city the same? She’s a chosen and contested jewel. 

Below the library window the uncultivated orange blossoms, the fragrance enveloping as you walk under the boughs. Petals strewn like garbage across the street. The orange itself is more bitter than a lemon, more wrinkly than an etrog, a fruit of festival, an emblem of earlier, equally violent times. 

We are exorted to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and as residents we are expected to pick up the psalm books left at the bus stop and declare “peace within your walls, security within your borders.” Blessed are those within you, Oh Zion, and blessed is the one who takes refuge on your holy mountain. 

Defining Desire

In the library of desire, catalogs of historic, modern, contemporary; sex. For Odysseus, irrational seduction until he is out of his xxxxx (controlled by the mind or the belly?) a flame or a furnace? If you shut your ears can you reclaim your self? There is no fire; what is left to return to? Ardent longing, justification for transgressing morality, Faithful to desire alone, not to any bond. Has the satisfaction of a human soul changed over time? What is it that will quench it, by God! O Captain, is it the hunt or the kill? Is it the whale upon your mantle, taunting you in salt-skin from the indomitable sea? Power and pride, esteem and influence, imposing order, conquering the other. To be remembered after you are gone. For freedom while you breathe? Heard in Gaza, the waning desire to live. The cries of children for their children, what life will that generation know?  To carry within the land as it was (and always will be), memory fervent and indestructible. Urges; compulsion, loosing the battle. Steady now, what were you made for? Purposed with breath. What is this stirring, to know and be known, for pleasure and for safety, for release and control. 

taught with tension

Breath and flesh

And fire too

Held in a longing 

A desire responding

Unleashed and yet restrained 

I’m seeking and searching 

We’re communing and birthing 

A life, a love, a name 

This season is about finding the rhythm to flow 

Holding a rope taut with tension and expectation

While apart and until we’re close

 

Becoming a longing

Prayer, properly understood, is nothing other than becoming a longing for God.
-Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, MCS, p. 15

I’ve got

I've got a furtive heart shyly glancing 

I’ve got lists of words and transliterations and translations, Grammar rules scribbled, later found to be unintelligible 

I’ve got a vacuum of dreams; Something about war that steals the hope for the future, the proximity of good too distant to be laid hold of 

I’ve got a weariness in my bones, cold and scoured by the wind of sighs and water of tears 

I’ve got lifted hands, upraised and emptied, waiting to be filled

I’ve got self control, perseverance and joy, I administer compassion to myself and my enemies 

I’ve got a reward I’m leaning into, a face shining from a recent conversation about glory covering the land as the sky encompasses and holds the whole earth 

I’ve got a song, a new song unfurling like a banner, carried by many who belong to each other and raise their voices in thankful union; body and blood communion; held and holy.

  

Journey of things unfair

If knowing answers to life’s questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables—of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair. -Madame Jeanne Guyon

It is a wrestle

And ultimate surrender: I am not God 

I do not make and I do not save

I am a needy creature

With longings and bias 

And only the creator knows the end from the beginning, 

and is working it all for good.

To trust in your infinite goodness and wisdom 

To rely on your sovereignty 

To press on in faith 

That is the journey.

To accept the things I cannot change 

And change the things I can

That is the journey. 

To keep hoping and loving 

Because you loved me first 

That is the journey.