*
Particles, Infinitesimally Small
Bonding Repelling
Repeatedly
Creating Matter
As we know it
Us, as we Are
Matching Composition
Of Stars and all Manner of Life
Reproducing Endlessly, Dying
Disintegrating,
something else takes our place
Life Rolling Into Itself
Tirelessly
*
Can we stop a Moment
Take a look, Shudder
As we Marvel in the Redundancy
Of our Minds?
*
Why Are We Here?
*
Art Work by Yaron Rosner
Written in the water of my life
are the whale songs of my beginning
long moans recalling the trappings
of my condition as well as the joys
of its definition
words appear, dissolve
elusively uttering riddles
leaving me to churn in the flow
of their meaning
Carried by the movement
I cannot fight
lest I be drowned
by the oblivion of unconscious thought
Spiraling I revisit the sounds
at once strange and familiar
until in recognition
they find their resting place
in the resonance of my beating heart.
To Amnon Zamir
Photograph by Yaron Rosner
You carry the Scent of lemons,
of gathered Sun, weathered
like Salt into your existence
Millennia of unsettled Dust
With the Fullness of pomegranates
the voices of my Ancestors roll
off your tongue, fall to my feet
as you turn, lean towards me
Touching your cheek, I hear them
call me Home, pleading
me to remember
I shudder in your warmth
Pine beneath
my golden welcome,
your mouth stamps
me with my essence
Patience I whisper,
and return to the pact
I have made my life
in Exile to be.
For some
The world
Is governed
By a towering
Omnipotent great father,
For others
An all encompassing
Omniscient great mother,
I like to think
It is governed
By my Existence
Reaffirming itself
Through the expression
Of my very being
Steeped in the abundance of stories told
She grew
A hum of voices lulling her spirit
Into fullness
Repeating names
Describing places of long ago
An island,
Houses perched Precariously
On cliffs
Beaten by a Vehement sea
Bountiful Traditions, ice fishing
carving, and Dancing – a life
Of millennia –
****
Like a wash of color
Deeply embedded
In the fiber of her being
Woven into her flesh
Is a longing She can’t define,
Pointing to her ancestors
She explains
That is where they lived
Half the year, in the Winter
She herself, has never been,
Imagines, smells, thirsts
A life no longer lived
Yet beats on, in her existence
Courses through her body
Evokes memories
Which are not hers – But Are –
****
With the persistence of a Survivor
She tells you
Of this world lost
To the arbitrary western mind
how she wants to return,
like one robbed of her Belonging
Her inheritance
****
King Island, Alaska Photograph Dave Cohoe
The dust of my beginning
Is the Breathing of my mother’s sighs
As she heaves the hills and deserts of my Belonging
The dust of my Becoming
Is what rises from my footfalls
As I search my mother’s contours
Question her substance
Look beneath the dirt of her surface
I sweat under the sun’s eye
chill in the night’s shadow
Until I find her
Gurgling between moss and stone
revealing the secret of her Determination
Through the sweetness of this liquid sound.
I embrace the Dust of my life
As I steep in the clarity of this water
My home for a Moment,
I know the dust to be my condition
The water my reward
Together they define my existence
Without them I am an Orphan
A beggar with no hands
To my grandfather
a Spirit you Appear
through your written elegance
A visionary you Hover
in the wounded Flesh
of your children’s hearts, who
remember you Vehemently
but in fact, hardly
Stories waft in pieces, Scents
Sounds of darbuka,
they vanish as quickly
nothing retains them, nobody
really knows the man
who died of an ancient virus
caught upon opening
the buried vaults
of Forgotten gods
By way of your Book
you visit me, Reveal
yourself , your love
for a land which raised you
was not yours, still
houses your Bones
I picture your soul
as the wind lifts the Sand
restless Circling
questioning the years
you spent on your own
Waiting to die
so far from those
who needed you most.
Like Jacob and his deeper daimon
all Night struggling
until at dawn the Angel
relents, dissolving
into Morning Light
Nightmares bubbling
up from our unconscious lives
Banging at the door of Awakening
discomfort born of Resistance
a story to hear, a complaint to file
the hidden Tenant
of our innermost Basement
The cost of civil Disobedience
Was it an Angel Jacob,
or was it just a nightmare
you wrestling with a deeper
more numinous part of yourself?
Was it just a nightmare Jacob?
Is there a difference?
