Make Your Home in the Imperfect Present
How many times have you thought this
is not it — when will
my true life begin?
How many times have you awakened
to one more stage rehearsal
for the main event
that never seems to happen?
If this is it, the tablets of your life
broken, then reconstituted
so instead of God writing,
a stuttering human
whose name means drawn from water
incised the words you live by —
If this imperfect not-as-you-had-
expected is the show —
if all your life could be lived
in the improvised now:
like the time you were awakened
early in Bologna, brought before a class,
unprepared as you were, to read and speak,
and because you had no time
for anxiety to take your breath
away like a smothering cat,
you stood and read and spoke into the moment.
If all your mistakes are not retakes
filed away for the perfect cut
but the mosaic you are
building from the shattered
pieces of some
inconceivable whole.
* * * * *
Two Stones
I keep despair in my pocket
like a sucking stone I can
pull out at any moment.
Oh, in the morning it lies on my tongue
when I can’t get out of bed, reminding me
I am nothing but dust —
nothing but loose grains of sand
unable to compress myself into a form
that rises and sings praises —
until I recall that other stone
I keep in my other pocket — the one that intones:
For you the world was made.
How can I retrieve this other stone —
the stone of faith and self-belief —
and moisten it on my tongue? Is it
caught inside the shofar
I am straining to blow?
Spurt of pebble-sound,
how is it a stone — a clenched bundle
of minerals — can loosen
into particles of moan
that stream out: Awaken! Arise!
Atone! Return!