Constructing An Altar

            

I clear a space for praise, placing three stones, loosened from well worn shoes,

beside essence of sage, still  green slivers of thyme, and lavender - the scent 

wanders towards my drying skin and spine, filling in the cracks.  I place 

 

a clay female figure from Crete with a crack down her chest and fragments 

for hands, feathers found when a truth was discovered, then lost, 

the letter aleph inscribed  on birch bark, a painted African dream bowl 

 

brimming with emptiness, like the one I hold deep in my hips 

always straining to carry less and more, a small silver mezuzah 

keeper of the hidden word that can be worn if I chose to, simply

 

around my neck, a golden comb capable of calming and untangling 

tight knots, a poem by Sara about constructing an altar at twenty

which conspires with the morning light to awaken me, 

 

all of it announcing, proclaiming the surprise of vision 

and movement, loss and arrival and how endlessly soon 

we all will scatter.