Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 194

Daily April poem: a cinquain

CINQUAIN FOR A CARDINAL

Redbird

atop the pine:

you sing that liquid tune

my mother's mother used to love.

Don't stop.

 

 

For the fifth day of National Poetry Month, the folks at NaPoWriMo challenged us to write a cinquain. So I wrote this poem on Friday, but am only posting it today, since on Friday I posted a poem derived from a 30/30 prompt instead.

A cinquain is a tightly-constrained form. It has five lines. The first line has two syllables (one of which is accented), the second line four syllables (and two accents), the third line six syllables (three accents), the fourth line eight syllables (four accents), and the fifth line two syllables (and one accent) again.

Mine was inspired by the cardinal I've been seeing when I arrive at the synagogue in the mornings. Cornell tells me that these are year-round birds both here and where I grew up. Lately he's been perched at the top of one of the trees near our building, singing lustily when I arrive at work. I love that these brilliant birds, which were a part of my south Texas childhood, live here in New England too.

Daily April poem: named after a spaceship

A Series of Unlikely Explanations

I expected invisible ink.

The walls are prettier this way.

It wasn't me, it was a ghost

who followed us from Houston.

Look, mom, turtles!

Haven't you been wanting to repaint?

We've been practicing calligraphy

at preschool and this was my homework.

This is a memorial wall

for the stuffed animals I've lost.

Those aren't scribbles, it's a fresco.

Someday you'll peel away this wallboard

and sell it to MASS MoCA

to hang alongside the LeWitts.

I'm playing with two different sets of poetry prompts this month --
30/30 and NaPoWriMo -- and I also wrote a poem this week which wasn't to any prompt. As a result, I'm posting some poems here a few days after they're written.

The day four prompt at NaPoWriMo was to write a poem to fit an unusual title -- one of the fantastical spaceship names used by science fiction writer Iain M. Banks (who recently announced that he has terminal cancer, sorry to say.) I love his ship names; I chose this one.

The ensuing poem was partially inspired by my own son, and partially by the delightful Honest Toddler. (Thankfully our son has not yet gotten the notion of scrawling on the walls; here's hoping he isn't secretly reading this blog.)

Daily April poem: Word to the Wise

WORD TO THE WISE

here: click on the X

to close the browser window,

clap the clamshell laptop shut

resist the twitching impulse

to open up Facebook

in search of one more pellet

remember that in public spaces

the comments are a hive

of stinging wasps

take three deep breaths

all the way to your diaphragm

lower your clenched shoulders

steep your mind's tofu

in a gentle bath of poetry

seasoned with psalms

savor all five tastes

with no danger of sickness

in the hard drive or the heart

 

 

This was written for the "sometimes you have to walk away" prompt at 30x30. If you're interested in other people's responses to the prompt, you
can check out each day's submissions by clicking on each prompt link, here.

The idea that the mind is like tofu, and takes on the flavor of whatever it steeps in, is one I first heard from Rabbi Jeff Roth, who attributed it to Reb Zalman.

And, of course, others are writing to the daily prompts at NaPoWriMo. (I did attempt their sea chanty prompt, but wasn't happy enough with the results to share them here, so -- you get another 30/30-inspired poem instead!)

Daily April poem: out of luck

SPRING

April does the cha-cha

with my expectations.

I'm ready to pop champagne

and declare the glacier

in front of the garage

melted for the season

when I wake

inside a snow globe again.

Pity the robins,

returned too soon

and forced to squabble

with the angry chickadees

for scarce barstools

at the birsdseed diner.

Fortunate worms, granted

a temporary reprieve.

 

 

The third 30x30 poem prompt was "out of luck."

Yesterday morning we enjoyed a bit of spring snow, and I couldn't help wondering -- as I do every year -- what becomes of the robins who return to New England before the snow has entirely relinquished us. This poem arose out of that wondering.

If you're interested in other people's responses to these prompts, you can check out each day's submissions by clicking on each prompt link, here. Feedback is always welcome!

NaPoWriMo 2013

Daily April poem: on the couch

POST-OP

You're pale against the red velour

and where your moose pyjamas gape

your belly is jaundiced

the curry-powder yellow of betadine.

They promised you a popsicle,

pressed a berry-scented mask

to your struggling face

and then you woke

to uncooperative legs and tender tummy,

a tube biting your hand like a snake

and monitor cables streaming

from your skinny ribcage.

Now you lie limp as the blanket

draped over your knees.

When you try to move, confusion

blooms: why does it hurt?

And clustered like ghosts

in the back of my heart:

all of the children who won't

be fully recovered tomorrow

all the parents who've learned

to mask oxycodone with honey,

who shave their own heads bare

in powerless solidarity...

How does God bear it?

Maybe the same way we do.

The heart shatters, but keeps beating

just love, just love, just love.

The second 30x30 poem prompt was "on the couch." I immediately thought of our son on the couch when he was recuperating from (perfectly ordinary, unremarkable) hernia surgery. Then I thought of the recent tough news at Superman Sam (The post you didn't want to read), and of all of the kids who are recuperating -- or not recuperating -- from infinitely more terrifying medical adventures than ours. The reality that children suffer is almost more than the heart can bear. Of course, we ache, and then we keep on loving; and in that, I think we mirror God, the cosmic Parent Who does the same.

If you want to send a note to Sam, you can write to him at Sam Sommer, E584 / Children's Hospital of Wisconsin / P.O. Box 1997 / Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-1997. Receiving notes, cards, etc (many featuring superheroes in some way) cheered him last time they were in the hospital for an extended stay.

On the 30 poems / 30 days front: some of us who are writing poems in response to these prompts are submitting them to the 30x30 website. If you're interested in other people's responses to these prompts, you can check out each day's submissions by clicking on each prompt link, here. And if you're interested in other folks who are attempting this same daily poem feat during National Poetry Month, don't miss NaPoWriMo, now in its tenth year!

Another morning-blessings poem

DAILY MIRACLES

You bring my son's footfalls to my door

and shock me awake with his cold heels against my ribs.

You teach me to distinguish waking life from dreaming.

You press the wooden floor against the soles of my feet.

You slip my eyeglasses into my questing hand

and the world comes into focus again.

In the time before time You collected hydrogen and oxygen

into molecules which stream now from my showerhead.

You enfold me in this bathtowel.

You enliven me with coffee.

Every morning you remake me in your image

and free me to push back against my fears.

You are the balance that holds up my spine,

the light in my gritty, grateful eyes.

I drafted this prayer/poem while preparing for the National Poetry Month Shabbat service I'm leading at my shul this weekend. I'll be pairing each of our morning prayers with an English-language poem which will hopefully illuminate the prayer in some way. I was looking for a poem to go with the birchot ha-shachar (morning blessings, which Mishkan T'filah calls nisim she'b'chol yom, blessings for the miracles of each day.) So I wrote this one.

Then I decided that my outline featured too many of my own poems, and struck this one from the plan in favor of a terrific poem by Adam Sol. But I still like this variation on the round of morning blessings, so I'm sharing it here. If you actually daven it, I'd love to hear how / whether it works for you! I suspect the opening couplet may be too me-specific to be workable for anyone else, but if I'm wrong about that, let me know.

Also: if you like these, you might like my morning blessings poem cycle, which features variations on Elohai Neshama (the blessing for the soul), Asher Yatzar (the blessing for the body), Baruch she'amar (the blessing for God Who speaks the world into being), and Nishmat kol chai ("The breath of all life"), originally drafted around 2002-2004.

NaPoWriMo 2013

30/30 poem 1: from start to finish

SEVEN BY SEVEN

Jewish math moves in multiples of seven:

six days of creation and then Shabbat

six years of farming, then the sabbatical

seven times seven years, then the jubilee

seven times seven days for the journey

between Pesach and Shavuot, freedom and revelation --

each day a facet which we polish

on this bright gem with 49 sides

and as we count we ascend slowly

to Sinai's dry foothills where we'll camp:

see thunder, hear shofar, await further instructions

The folks at the Word by Word festival are doing a 30 poems / 30 days challenge during April (National Poetry Month), and they're emailing out daily prompts. I can't promise that I'll write 30 poems this month (nor that I'll post all of them here, even if I do), but I figured I'd at least post the first one. The first prompt was from start to finish.

Since we're in the period of the Counting of the Omer, that was the start-to-finish which immediately came to mind. The Omer lasts for seven weeks, seven sets of seven days. As I wrote and revised, the poem took on the ad hoc form of seven words per line. Enjoy! (ETA: here are all of the poems written / submitted for this prompt...)

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

To my Christian friends and loved ones, I wish a Happy Easter! May your day be filled with alleluias.

In honor of the season, I'll link back to something I wrote and shared here in 2009, a post about two Easter services (one in 2003, one in 2009) at a local Episcopal church. Here's a taste:

What I remember of that Easter service: one of the acolytes had bright
yellow
streamers on a tall bendy rod, which he waved over the community as he
processed down the aisle. Everyone wore their Easter best, including
pastel hats on some of the ladies and frilly dresses on some of the
little girls. The rector's sermon included verses from Rumi, and at the
end, when
he concluded with the words "will you rise?" we were all so moved that
we
took his question as a rhetorical/spiritual one, not a literal
invitation to
stand.

Many Jews have
inchoate feelings of apprehension about Easter. The liturgy of Holy Week
(with its story of Jesus' death, blamed on the Jews until the late 20th century)
has historically sparked anti-Jewish violence at this season.
Accusations that Jews tortured Christian children and/or used their
blood for making our Passover matzot resulted in Eastertide violence against Jews in England in the twelfth century (see The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich), Lisbon in the sixteenth century (the Easter Massacre) and the twentieth century (the First Kishinev Pogrom.) (For more on this history, read Why Some Jews Fear the Passion at Christianity Today.) It can be hard to shed the collective memory of these stories.

But whatever of that was
dormant in me, six years ago, was washed away that Easter morning and replaced with a renewed
awareness of how sweet it can be to be (in Reb Zalman's terms) a "spiritual
peeping Tom," looking to see how other people "get it on with God."

You can read the whole post here: A field trip into Easter.

Returning to leaven

Breads and doughs. Photos taken over the years.

We don't cleanse our house of hametz (leaven) as thoroughly as many of my friends do. (I wrote a poem about that last year -- Bedikat chametz in the toddler house.) Still, after a week of dining on matzah brei (matzah, soaked in hot water and wrung out, then scrambled with eggs and milk and salt and pepper) and matzah spread with cream cheese, that first leavened meal after Pesach is always a treat. As much as I love the first tastes of matzah at the seder, the familiar scents and textures of haroset and horseradish and matzah's crunch, I also love that first sandwich once I'm back in the land of the leaven-eating again.

Hametz and matzah are made of the same ingredients: flour and water. (I've written about this before -- hametz and matzah, 2006.) What makes matzah matzah is that it is baked speedily, so that the natural yeasts which abound don't have time to begin to ferment and inflate the dough. The two words have almost the same letters in Hebrew. Hametz is spelled חמץ, matzah is spelled מצה -- the only difference is between the ח and the ה, in that little open space in the letter ה. Hametz is spacious because the bread is risen; matzah is flat, so its spaciousness is spiritual rather than physical. Or, maybe the space in that ה is what lets God in...

The challenge, for me, is holding on to the spiritual spaciousness of Pesach once I'm no longer experiencing the reminder of matzah at every meal. That's one of the reasons I so love counting the Omer: it gives me a way to hold on to the sweetness, and the spiritual spaciousness, of Pesach long after the festival is past. For seven weeks, I have a built-in practice to help keep me mindful: of the passing of time, of the journey from freedom to revelation, of the lessons of Pesach which I want to carry with me into the year to come. Freedom all by itself is -- not meaningless, to be sure, but only a first step. The next step is getting ready to enter into covenant, into relationship.

Imagine what it might have been like for our ancestors, wandering during this time. They'd left the harsh labor of Pharaoh's brick-making camps, left a world in which a ruler could decree that all Hebrew boy-children be slaughtered at birth. They'd crossed the Sea of Reeds, walking miraculously on dry sand, maybe with walls of gleaming water suspended impossibly on each side. Signs and wonders, miracles like no one had ever imagined! And now they were camping in the desert, free and probably frightened. So they were free of Pharaoh: now what? To whom would they declare their allegiance? Whom would they serve?

The Jewish answer, of course, is God. Everybody serves someone or something. We choose to be avdei Adonai, servants of the Most High.

Did we ever truly wander in the wilderness? Who knows. I can't say that I care much, one way or the other. What I love is that this is the story we tell about ourselves. We left the dehumanizing servitude of a tyrant, and instead of finding another earthly power to yoke ourselves to, entered into relationship with the source of compassion and blessing in the world. That's what we serve: not Pharaoh, not a boss, but the One Who asks us to partner in the work of healing the brokenness in creation.

In the hamotzi blessing, we bless God Who brings forth bread from the earth. Of course, God doesn't bring forth bread, per se; what God brings forth from the earth is grain. We have to do our part: milling the grain into flour, mixing and kneading the flour into dough, letting the dough rise, shaping and baking it. In Genesis 3 this is framed as a response to the first humans' choice to pursue knowledge -- now we'll earn bread with the sweat of our brows, working to till the earth and tend it and to turn the grain into something we can consume. But that shift is also a kind of growing-up. In the Eden story, we were like children, and everything was provided for us. Post-Eden, we're more mature beings, and we're able to do some of the work to feed ourselves -- and to experience the satisfaction of making bread with our own hands.

It's a new kind of partnership. Just as we partner with God in making the world a better place, we also partner with God in turning the raw materials of our world into something sophisticated and new. God is still the One Who brings forth the grain from the earth, Who causes blessings to flow into creation, Who caused the grains to evolve in all of their beautiful and diverse forms. And we're the ones who get to turn those grains into a wealth of beautiful and diverse breads...which, after Pesach (whenever that is for you, depending on whether you celebrate for seven days or for eight), we once again get to eat.

A Sestina for Counting the Omer

We mark the Omer day

by day, spring unfolding light

as snowflakes in the breeze. One

follows another; we measure each week

of this dusty journey through

wild unknowing. Come and count.

Time to make our qualities count.

The kaleidoscope shifts every day,

each dawn a lens that God shines through.

What in me will be revealed as light

streams into me each week?

Seven colors of the rainbow make one

beam of white. God is One

and God's in everything we count.

Lovingkindness permeates the first week,

then boundaries, harmony, each day

a different lens for light

to warm our hearts as it glows through.

And when the Omer count is through?

We'll stand at Sinai, every one

-- every soul that's ever been -- light

as Chagall's floating angels. Count

with me, and treasure each day.

A holy pause caps every week.

Endurance comes into play: week

four. We wonder, will we make it through?

Humility and splendor in a single day,

two opposites folded into one.

Roots strengthen us as we count.

Every day, more work to do and stronger light.

Torah is black fire on white, light

of our lives. In the seventh week

time warps and ripples as we count.

Kingship and presence come through,

transcendence and immanence bundled as one,

wholly revealed on the forty-ninth day...

Feel the light now pouring through.

Each week the seven sefirot become one.

It's time to count the Omer, now, today.

The Counting of the Omer -- as regular readers no doubt know by now! -- is the holy process of marking and counting each of the 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation.

In the kabbalistic system, each week represents one of the seven lower sefirot, and so does each day within each week. So the first week is the week of chesed, lovingkindness; week two is gevurah, boundaries; week three is tiferet, harmony; week four is netzach, endurance; week five is hod, humility and splendor; week six is yesod, roots or foundation; and week seven is malchut, kingship / sovereignty / Shekhinah. Within each week, also, the seven qualities play out day by day.

"Every day there is more work to do / and stronger light" is a couplet from Marge Piercy's glorious poem "Season of the Egg," which I read every year during my Pesach seder. I abbreviated it slightly to make it work here as a single line. (You can find her poem online in this blog post -- just scroll down a bit.) And as for the reference to Chagall's floating angels, here are thumbnails of two beautiful Marc Chagall paintings which feature people floating. I like to think of them as people whose spirits can't help but soar.