Final Omer Days

As the sun sets, this Friday evening, we move into the final day of this year's Omer counting practice. Here in the Bay Area, these seven weeks have taken us from the first buddings of early spring into full-blown fecundity--blossoming fruit trees, rose bushes burgeoning, lush green hills beginning to brown. We Jews are approaching the mountain. Clustered at its foot, we gaze upward toward the revelatory heights, shrouded in smoke, cloud, mist. Like the ancient mountain, these times are raw, jagged,  heart-rending, and perilous. So much is now torn. I pray that we will opened, not be torn apart, by the Word. 

A new poem for this day that is passing....

Day 48, Yesod sheh’b’malkhut
 
Is it the
foundation of the
​world that's crumbling
or merely a
façade, being chipped
away like the
​once-vividly painted
Buddhist temples, sand
blasted by time
into softened shapes
of grey moss-covered
stone, overgrown with 
vines and brush?
Is there a
Foundation that never 
crumbles? some summer
raft bobbing far
out in the
frigid water, a
​float toward which
I can swim,
braving the battering
waves, grabbing onto
its flimsy rusted
ladder, hauling myself
up onto it
gasping, to sit 
and warm my
gooseflesh in the
sun, postponing that
inevitable moment when
I’ll have to 
dive back in
and stroke my
way to shore? 
Or is it
sun or wind
or whoever I
think I can
count on but
can’t really? Perhaps
some space between,
gravity, deep listening,
surrender, relief, joy--
the Unmoored Mooring 
that with us
counts our days?
 
                        5-18-18