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...)