Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 192

(Another) Daily April poem: words chosen by NaPoWriMo

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW


Powered by an everlasting generator
until bedtime when you shove your fists
into your eyes, curl next to the giant tiger.
Playgrounds are miraculous. So are trains.
Changing from blanket sleeper into clothes
is a tragedy, sunscreen is an insult.
You're mercurial as April weather, sunny
with occasional snow squalls. I don't want
to squander your long arms clenching my neck,
your solemn rendition of Twinkle Twinkle,
your long willowy body sidling into our bed
to mark a new day with a blue bear kiss.

 

 

I'm posting two poems today because on Tuesday I won't be posting a daily poem here -- I'll be sharing something exciting and don't want anything to draw attention away from that day's post.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt includes a list of words and invites the writing of a poem which uses at least five of those words. I wound up using six of them: generator, curl, miraculous, mercurial, squander, willowy. I love prompts like this one because they often impel me to work with words I wouldn't otherwise have chosen. Unsurprisingly, I worked their words into a poem about parenting, which is so frequently the subject matter on my mind.

Daily April poem: unprompted

FIRST AND LAST

The first spring peepers clamoring outside every window
The last of the old year's strawberry vodka swirling in my glass

the first dream about reading in an impossible bookstore
the last week before the book emerges, slick and glossy-blue

the first tefillin I've worn in months, wrapping my arm snug
the last heavy boots of winter, overheating my tired feet

the first time he lifts the silver cup and doesn't spill a drop
the last blessing won't be obvous until the next doesn't come

 

 

This poem was written on an uneasonably warm evening as the rain began to blow in. I don't think it requires any explanations.

A bar mitzvah gift for the rabbi

Somehow I always forget that I'm going to be moved.

We're a small synagogue, so every time a kid becomes b'nei mitzvah, it feels like a big deal. I imagine that in some big-city shuls, where there might be one or more bar or bat mitzvah celebrations each week, maybe it becomes a little bit ho-hum. But not here. Here we only have one or two a year, and each one stands  out.

I always love looking out into the sanctuary and seeing the expectant faces of those who have gathered to celebrate Shabbat and to celebrate a young person's coming-of-age. I love leading us through Shabbat morning prayer, offering words of explanation to string the prayers together like pearls in a necklace.

I love inviting people up to see the Torah scroll in all of its unique handwritten beauty. I love singing English words to Torah trope and surprising people with hidden meanings. I love the laughter which erupts as we sing Siman Tov u-Mazal Tov and people throw candy at the b'nei mitzvah kid who has jubilantly finished the d'var Torah.

But I'm typically so focused on the service, on keeping things running smoothly, on trying to facilitate genuine prayer both for myself and for all who've assembled, that I forget that the morning always turns out to hold a gift for me, too. This time what made my heart catch in my throat was hearing one of the mothers of the bar mitzvah boy offer him a blessing she has spoken to him countless times over the course of his life: the priestly blessing, "May God bless you and keep you..."

As soon as she began, I felt tears banging at the back of my eyes. I say those words to our son every week too, punctuating each English and Hebrew phrase with a kiss to his forehead. And it hadn't occurred to me until today that someday I'll say those same words to him in front of our community, as he stands tall in a brand-new tallit -- maybe awkward and gangly, maybe bashful and beaming -- and steps over the threshold into Jewish adulthood. Right now our guy is only three, but I remember when this bar mitzvah boy was only three, too. The days are long but the years are short.

As the mother of the bar mitzvah blessed her son, I pressed my hand to my lips and blinked a lot, really fast, to clear my eyes. By the time I returned to the bimah, my emotions were under control and I was able to speak and sing clearly. But that moment of realization, that glimpse of the future, is still reverberating in me. An unexpected gift.

Daily April poem: same word

GREY


-- and some days are grey from the start
of the too-early dawn, and when I hear
footfalls on the stairs I can't bear
to open my eyes. The sky is striated,
sadness and overwhelm in alternating bands.
And tomorrow will be the same, and --

 

 

 

This poem came out of the NaPoWriMo prompt which invited us to use the same word at the beginning and the end of a poem. Beginning and ending the same way put me in mind of depression, which can take the form of feeling as though nothing will ever change and the clouds will never lift.

A Prayer After the Boston Marathon Bombing

PRAYER AFTER THE BOMBING


Plant your feet firmly on the ground, your head
held high as though by a string.

Listen to the red-winged blackbirds, the spring frogs.
There is an aquifer in your heart: send a dipper down.

What have you drawn forth? Send it
out of this room like waves of song.

Float it around the Hairpin Turn, along
the old Mohawk Trail. Direct it toward the rising sun.

Our hearts are in the east though we are in the west.
Blanket the wounded city with melody.

Sing to the runners with aching hamstrings
to the bewildered families who lined the marathon route

to the children who are trying to make sense
to the adults who are trying to make sense

to the EMTs and policemen who ran
not away from the suffering, but into the fire

sing to the grieving families, here and everywhere.
Inhale again, reach into your well:

is there light even for the twisted soul of the bomber?
Now sing to yourself, sluice your own wounds.

We are loved by an unending love.
Listen to the birds again, and remember.

 

 

I wrote this a few days after the Boston Marathon bombing. It arose out of a meditation service which I led at my synagogue. The doors to our sanctuary were open, so we had the sounds of the nearby wetland in our ears, and I invited the meditators to join me in cultivating compassion and sending it toward Boston.

The line "My heart is in the east and I am in the west" is adapted from the medieval Spanish poet Judah haLevi.

Alternating stanzas of the poem are italicized to facilitate reading the poem as a responsive reading. Please feel free to use this however is meaningful to you, and to share it with others. (Edited to add: in as my About page indicates, work on this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons license which grants permission to share and remix my work as long as you maintain attribution, don't make a profit, and share your remixed work in the same fashion.)

To those for whom it is meaningful, I wish a Shabbat shalom, a Shabbat of peace and healing.

(Also posted at Kol ALEPH.)

Daily April poem: a greeting

THREE AND A HALF

I sense you waiting in the wings, but

my nearsighted eyes can't quite make you out.

What are you holding: a new sun hat?

A pair of floaties, to help you overcome

the swimming pool's vast aqua deeps?

I can't wait to press my lips

against your sunwarmed skin.

Even if you still hunch your shoulders

to telegraph abject woe

when I put the Milanos too high to reach.

If you're anything like the little boy

who plays hide-and-seek with his ballcap

and asks me to pretend to sit on him

so I can leap up in mock surprise,

we'll get along just fine.

But say: would you consider

letting me sing to you again?

I wasn't ready for that window to slam shut.

If I have to, I'll murmur while you're sleeping,

serenade you as you dream of four.

 

 

The folks at NaPoWriMo invited us to write poems of greeting. I found myself greeting the next parenting milestone: our son turning three-and-a-half. As of this writing, that milestone is (unbelievably) only about six weeks away.

Daily April poem: a "translation"

DRUNK

Whatever: bewig yourself with volts,
hit the sauce this evening, go vague.
It renders me villainous, sere and low.
I'm dishy, muddled, made of raw helter-skelter.
Follow me. This place is a zoo.
Empty your glass, empty your glass,
empty your glass.

 

 

 

This poem began its life as a "translation" of The Bee-Keeper by Hungarian poet István Kemény (per a challenge from the NaPoWriMo folks). I don't speak Hungarian, so I rendered the syllables in rough approximation, based on their sounds. Then refined and smoothed the "translation" a few times.

I wound up with a poem about getting hammered. It has absolutely nothing to do with the original poem (which is beautiful and worth reading!) -- but it's an interesting short piece which I wouldn't have written if I hadn't started out with my phonic rendering of the unfamiliar Hungarian words.

 

More reflections on Boston

I posted a response to the Boston Marathon bombing to my congregational blog today. That post contains excerpts from two prayers which I've found particularly meaningful this week. It also contains links to a variety of resources on grief. Whether or not you're a member of my congregation, please feel free to click through to that post if you think it might be helpful to you: A message from Reb Rachel after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Meanwhile, I'll share a few other things with which I've resonated this week. The first essay to which I want to link makes a kind of meta-point: not about the Boston Marathon, but about the ways in which television news (about this event, and in general) feeds our anxiety. Beth at The Cassandra Pages writes about encountering television news in a doctor's waiting room, and then returning home to the news of Monday's bombing. And she continues:

[The omnipresence of tv news] seems to me an ominous symbol of something that has gone very wrong in most western societies: our inability to be with ourselves, to cope with the essential human condition of solitude, especially in situations that cause our anxiety to rise. It concerns me that, in our secular, post-liberal-arts, technological, perpetually-connected society, so little effort goes into teaching children how to be alone, showing them the richness and solace of time spent with nature, with the arts and handcrafts, with books and music, with oneself walking in a city or sitting on a bench: eyes open, ears open, mind and heart awake to the dance of life flowing around us.

I'm with Beth, here. I find that the incessant clamor of the constant news cycle isn't conducive to my mental, emotional, or spiritual health. I'm happier getting my news in more contained doses: from NPR, the BBC, the Times, and -- these days -- my Twitter stream (even though I recognize the dangers of homophily inherent in that last one.) But regardless of where and how you get your news, I think Beth has a point that constant newsmedia-watching can leave us unable to cope with solitude and with uncertainty. Both as a poet and as a rabbi, I experience that as a real loss. Her post is here: A Plea Against Anxiety.

Next, I want to share two posts about the experience of being at the marathon as a spectator and what two women took away from that. The first comes from author Carrie Jones, and is called Boston Marathon. Here's a quote from near the end of that post:

And so many people helped others, making tourniquets out of yarn,
carrying the injured, soothing the shocked, giving away their clothes to
keep runners warm. And so many people have hearts of goodness. We can't
forget that. Not ever. Not today. Not in Boston. Not ever. Because that
is exactly what the Boston Marathon is about: It's about not giving up,
not giving in to pain. It's about that celebration of surviving and
enduring against all odds, against everything. It's about humanity. No
bomber can take that away. Not ever.

And finally I'll leave you with Sarah Courchesne's My Lucky Day: the view from mile 22. She writes:

I know how you all feel, watching it all. I understand the shock, the
disbelief, the anger and the demands to know why. But from where I
stood, my whole day was suffused with the pure good of humanity. And
that’s not unique to Boston, or to America... What I saw was the good. And I see it still. It’s all I
see.

I've read both of those posts a few times through, and the message of hope I find at the end of each one is sustaining to me.

Daily April poem: unprompted

RED MAPLE

When we planted this red maple

it was barely a foot high,

shorter than a frill of kale.

We'd been married five years.

We dug a little hole and hoped.

This week the snow is finally gone

and we walk the perimeter, unearthing

sandbox toys, faded cars,

plastic tee and bat.

I almost don't recognize the tree:

sprawling gangly, reaching

over my head toward the clouds.

Ten years make a solid foundation

for curled-tight leafbuds, balanced

across branches, ready to burst free.

 

 

This poem wasn't written to any prompt; it arose on its own. I wrote it on the 20th day of the Omer, the day of yesod (roots, generativity, foundation) within the week of tiferet (harmony, balance). I had that combination of qualities in mind as I worked on the poem. Hopefully their presence is manifest.

Daily April poem: about a superhero

MODERN-DAY GOLEM

When Tony puts on
his Iron Man suit

bright spark of life
pulsing in his chest

does he feel like
the Golem of Prague

rising to the rescue
from the Vltava's banks?

He masters the air
as Loew mastered incantations.

No words are written
above his brown eyes

but if his electromagnet
relaxed its constant humming

all his mechanical strength
would drain away, truth

reverting to death again
as though a thumb

had erased that letter
without which we melt

into the primeval mud
from which we came.

 

 

A recent prompt at NaPoWriMo invited the writing of superhero (or supervillain) persona poems. I didn't manage to write in the voice of a superhero, but I did write a poem about one -- actually kind of about two at once, since the poem compares Tony Stark / Iron Man to the Golem of Prague.

In the version of the golem story I know best, Rabbi Loew created the golem out of the mud of the Vltava river and brought him to life using kabbalistic incantations. The golem's task was to protect the Jews of Prague from pogroms. On his forehead was written the word אמת / emet, "truth." When the א was erased, leaving behind מת / met, "death," the golem was turned back into mud.

Tony Stark doesn't have mystical Hebrew letters written on his face; instead he's kept alive by the presence of an arc reactor -- a powerful magnet -- embedded in his chest.