To Shabbes

I want to plead "don't go!"
    though I know you'll return.
        I trust the future I can't see.

My strength is in your song
    even when I'm not certain
        how to play all the chords.

When you're with me
    every channel opens,
        sweetness courses through.

My unlovely thin skin
    becomes a cloak of light.
        I breathe the air of Eden.

Return quickly, beloved!
    I'm counting the days.
        I carry you in my heart.

This is another poem in the series of poems of yearning and longing which I think will probably become part of the chapbook which currently has the working title of Texts to the Holy.

There are a lot of references here to the prayers of havdalah, the ritual which sanctifies separation between Shabbat and week -- especially to the opening prayers which precede the blessings. Also to a teaching which riffs off of the fact that the Hebrew words for "skin" and for "light" are homonyms. (Find it at the end of this post.) There's also a hint at Yedid Nefesh, which I think is one of our tradition's most beautiful songs of yearning for the Beloved.