Wednesday, January 16, 2008

DOAEN 18: Tkhine in Sh'vat


"The renewal of the moon shall be for you a beginning of new moons; it shall be for you the first among the months of the year."
Exodus 12:2


Lord, if you're out there today
hesitating someplace between the branches of trees
in the interstices of black matter,
or in the dotted lines that stitch
hemispheres into a radiant globe,

I, your daughter, beseech you
who reflects
from beneath the cool shadow
of her parents' death
so I may

take a breath and exhale
into a lover's ear
as you score
chronicles of the winding canal,
through and out

listening so closely, you may understand
the sorrows of the world, and by that
I don't mean the common every day stubbing,
but why a child is shot in the abdomen
by a stray bullet while taking piano lessons,

glass shattering,
or how a journalist is gunned down in the street
for telling truth, in my own community,
far from other cities where terrible things happen
for which I have no ample words.

All I know
is I must find my way back to you
like a child
pushing through wild grass,
wandering far from home.