midrashic poetry

Korban: The Offering, The Command

and so at long last
this is my offering
commanded from fire and mountain
cleft of rock, an inner
whispering roar

Tzav and Tears

a command
is heard as
if an inner call –
always bring salt
to your offerings
gathered from
sea and tears.

Vayikra: The Serving Women Are Called

We arrive
the women
who serve
Sacred Presence
moved by our hearts

Walking In A Field In Leverett: Call And Response

You say look: there is a hawk and I hear

a fierce winged seeking. You say see

a lady slipper and we pause

in recognition of what survives.

Kaddish For The Tree Of Life

We rise
for the ancient prayer
for the dead
a pathway back
for the living,

Kaddish

The mourners within me rise
for the sake of the forgotten,
for the sake of the slaughter, for the sake
of the wounding,
the broken, the grief.

Clouds and Clearing

Which are the clouds
of Holiness and which
the fog of our own
making –

Beginnings

There she sat in her void
life and word still a dark whole
and she said: let there be
self, and there was
pink flailing breathing –
reaching to find the familiar edges
of what had been womb.

Vayakhel Moshe: Moshe Summons Us And We Try Again

I hear him calling
from my closed tent –
gather assemble
come to the fire.
Let’s try again
to retrieve the trust
shattered with the first tablets

Lev Pharaoh: His Hardened Heart/Mind

Bo come into the captive
mind of Pharaoh, hardened,
stiffened. made resistent:
va’yichazak, va yi’cabad, va yi’kashe