A were-child
a little were-girl with ponytails and
a bike with a basket and bell
can eat her own weight in about
an hour. Which doesn’t
sound like much but you know
that’s more than your arm, your leg,
your head.
A case
Is there a case to be made
a first affirmative delivered in defense
of collating those second-rate thoughts
you might not see again (or even miss)?
Shake them out of your hands, those
drops of borrowed blue electric ink
to make room in the sides of your fingers
for some top-notch scribble sent down
like a message
in a lunchbox on string
you once lowered through a bannister
to rest on the carpet down below
just in case
someone curious walked by.
A beep
A beep from the phone
a text from someone and
why not let it sit? Perhaps it wants to sit.
Maybe it will
ferment or blossom decay
or dissolve
into a small pinch of
dirt in your slacks
given
enough time
a little time
time to rest and
some loving lack
of attention.
Wonderful, powerful
Wonderful, powerful, important words
I found today in Deuteronomy:
“for our lasting good.”
“Our” in this case, a people. Not a person.
“Lasting,” to think past the moment.
Now there — there is a phrase worth diagramming.
Worth pondering, worth knitting, worth chatting about over breakfast.
Worth adding harmonies to. Worth writing down.
Worth being reminded of.
Worth passing along.
Collateral Love
I’m the victim of a collateral love experience.
The love that tears through the space around,
tries to connect and disassemble
people sitting around and
behind me.
I’m caught in the love bomb.
Irradiated.
Stabbed with shards
with melodies
that tear into my shoulder, my
back, my knees. The
walls buckle as the wave bounces.
My wife is there too. At my side.
And she feels it
burst through the room, along
with the singer’s smile.
She feels the love that wasn’t
meant for us
at least not just for us
the love aimed
at the back of the wall.
We collapse into it.
We break together.
As the theater lights
blink on.
Ways I may have changed
It might be that my exterior melted a bit last year
that it’s shinier now, more like fiberglass, which I hadn’t noticed to be honest
until just last week.
That it’s a little more weather resistant, which is nice.
More sun proofed. Akin to the skin
of a sailboat — a sunfish sailboat like the one
my dad wanted to buy when I was a teen, and he was in his forties,
when we took that class about
tying knots.
I used to pride myself on my permeable skin.
I would chat with you
we would chat about this or that, and through our chat
I would find myself replenished.
My roots. My happy roots.
But now things bead up on me sometimes.
I look down at my legs, at my hands and I see water beads
I shake off those beads and I think
this is a way that I may have changed
a bit last year.
Ocean ready I am.
But covered in beads.
I made eggs yesterday and learned a lesson.
I like to make fried eggs — I like the experience, putting a little chilli on them, putting the cover on to cook them top down. I like flipping them and I like not flipping them. I find the whole thing much more pleasing than scrambling eggs, but don’t get me wrong. I also like scrambling eggs.
Anyways on this particular day — let’s call it “yesterday” — I cracked my first egg perfectly and put it in a small bowl. The idea was to keep it separate from the second egg in case catastrophe struck and I broke the yolk. Safety first, right?
I cracked the second egg in its own bowl, and — yoinks! Broken yolk. Sad but resilient, I tossed the second egg, and cracked the third, and double-yoinks on the third egg! I tossed the third. I cracked the fourth, and again, there was something off in my technique. Too much vigor? Ruined! Tossed!
And here, the twist: I reached into the fridge to get more eggs, to complete my perfect pair-of-soon-to-be fried eggs. And yet. And yet.
There were no more eggs.
Left with just one egg now — well who wants just one fried egg? Perhaps you do, and if so, I wish I had made you one. But not me. I’m all about two eggs. So I tossed my one good egg.
And here’s the lesson learned: Had I not tossed the second — perhaps just made a scramble, I would have had a lovely egg snack. Had I checked the fridge before tossing the second, and third, and yes fourth, I would have had a lovely egg snack.
But I had no lovely egg snack. Only two bowls to clean. And a banana, slightly bruised.
The 5 Books Meander, Week 25: Tazria’
What just happened:
Some sections are easier to relate to than others. And then there was this week’s parsha. Two years ago there wouldn’t have been much to work with here. This year it read like a practical and super relevant how-to guide for people learning to live together, when living together means living with disease.
Clank
I want to clank my fist
against the armor they’re constructing
inside me.
Rattle the scaffolding
just enough to let them know
I know
there are laborers hammering away at this
shiny new space suit
they’re building inside me
I can feel them hammering with their tiny hammers.
My skin can feel them all
so I can
survive
this new terrain.
For example:
coffee shops, I’m told,
are where humans
like to sit and read.
To write short poems.
The 5 Books Meander, Week 25: Shemini
What just happened:
This was a big one — the laws of kashrut (aka how to be kosher), including surprising news about bunnies and bats!
Of possible note:
- The gestures, the rituals, the blood, the burning — I had never thought of it this way before, but today it really struck me how much these directions felt like spells and incantations, a pinch of this and a dash of that… And of course, follow them to the T if you want to avoid the fate of Nadab and Abihu. (Spoiler: you want to avoid the fate of Nadab and Abihu.)
- For a book filled with people who live in gray moral spaces, who are more human than paragons, the Torah sometimes draws awfully sharp lines. There’s the sacred and the profane. There are animals you can eat, and animals that are abominations. There aren’t many animals for example, that I wouldn’t recommend you eat, I’m mean they’re kind of gamey, but suit yourself.
- Speaking of kind of gamey, who knew bunnies aren’t kosher? Clearly not my beloved Aunt Ruth. Likewise, who knew that bats were birds? Total curveball, that.
- Curveballs aside, a wise fellow reader pointed out to me that all these rules, these details, create a life infused with reminders of the sacred. Which made me wonder what I might do to add a little more sacred to my day to day.