Shema
(translated on the occasion of rosh chodesh Kislev)
Dear Jacob,
god is the god,
but only god.
Can you even love god
with your heart?
Or is it your soul.
Would you take off your shirt
and your socks? Your many hats.
Write these questions
on your heart, today
if only on the first of its pages.
Show your children
how to ask,
no one is embarrassed.
Sitting down in your room
or walking away from it.
Do you know how to lie down
begging, arise already bargaining?
Bind the words in ink
along your arms,
across your face
they wind a circle.
And then you
open your doors in them,
your home is at the gates.
❦
Because you are listening closely
can you realize the words are already
true, the premise of the questions
come to pass for you to hear.
Can you love god or serve him
while love wastes away in your heart,
servitude sleeps in your soul.
Fed by the rain in its proper seasons,
like early rain in March
coming before you know a thing
or later rains of May pouring
down on your warm, tired, shoulders.
You set out seeded loaves, sweet wine,
cups of oil, and the cows
by now are pregnant, full of milk.
So you may know yourself but not the urge
in your heart to be with the gods,
to wash their feet, coo while braiding their
hair, or to orgasm. By then is it lost.
The blaze devours your home, your sister,
scorching the rain and casting a veil
of smog so thick as to disrupt even
your heaven. Where will you turn.
Where did your heart disappear to, where
is your soul if not in one single word?
Seal it along the length of your arm
with your tongue like an envelope,
encircle the word with your eyes like a pupil,
a mouth. Ask it of your children,
discuss with them important, beautiful things
while you sit together or walk alongside
the river, cuddling, waking them up.
Nail that mouth to your doorpost
so it serves as the threshold.
You have to live beginning
to end on the ground like a baby,
so god affixes it to heaven.
❦
Whereupon Moses
heard
all of this
the god told
him straight faced:
tie for Jacob’s
children seedling
flowers, tassels
on their baby
blankets,
uniforms and ceremonied
robes and death
shawls.
Weave
them woolen
threads, stained
in horse
shoe crab,
tell them, look
when I crush
the shell.
You are
the tassel, Moses.
You are that
first
memory,
look, and close
your purposeless eyes,
shutter
your heart when it floats.
Open
only remembering
the wild expanse
the sea made.
Moses, so am I
god who
split the ocean
floor, I
split the
sea
to find you.