My mother went down into rainwater and barely-restrained slop. The water immediately stained the wood, attacked. It wouldn’t be long till…
My mother who was so neat…
So lonely. I see her forever embraced by God. If everything ended in her bed in the nursing home…
No one was more loyal. She needed you. To stay sane, stay alive.
Through you she could have a little mercy on herself.
And she was so obedient. Not reading Hebrew, she put everything she had into chanting the Shema. I heard a wild regret in her voice, and piety, and beyond that a kaleidoscope—a fundamental sweetness, love she couldn’t express, the true pain of all that resilience.
Same with the way she took a hand from her walker, reached up and kissed the mezuzah. The wish to be a good girl for you. What more could you ask for?
But if there is no you…
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Me, I like to think of a you. So October 7th is, somehow, for the good.
I’m walking, gifts wherever I look. From you, but indirectly. Don’t picture you releasing this breeze from your hand…
More that you, the unknowable, were slightly manifest, in some Eden many removes from matter. You touched in a point, from which realms unfolded, a whole cascade of invisible infrastructure—each of your qualities a separate…reality.
I like to bathe my head in these silvery thoughts.
But I know I’m an animal. What are the chances we’ve discovered the truth? That you really don’t want us to mix meat and milk?
Atheists and aliens look at me with pity. My golden retriever is peering intently into space, asking for and receiving your guidance.
Do life forms on other worlds also believe in you? There you separated the methane from the sulfur dioxide…
Throughout the universe, we all pray together.
Part of me is heavy, knowing the truth. ‘Truth is (desolate, soul-crushing) beauty’.
Take away the you. Forbid me to use it, to go there.
And part of me is lighter, cleaves a little bit to you, lifts.
I do know you fashioned my wife.
As a being in a solar system, I can only know with certainty that this laugh of hers, on the phone with a friend, is Light.
You imbued her with some of your nature. Kissed her and sent her off, excited to see what she would do.
I guess many people feel this way about those they love…