moment of encounter

i saw a deer and the deer saw me,
one eye open and staring in my direction
as two hearts hesitated in alien chests.
i was driving my car toward home, and
the deer was idling, eating some grass.
its home may have been anywhere at all.
two hearts thumped at the exact same moment
in the time-toughened chambers of two
bodies, each alone among the millions
which comprised each of their own
separate and distinct species. i saw
the deer, and the deer saw me,
and i kept driving, and i can only
suppose that the deer
kept standing there, eating.

the [ups] & [downs] of a life which is lived

when a life is truly lively,
there’s no telling what.
no how, when, why.
ups are inverted instantly
into the most abysmal
downs, dismal and depressing,
only to turn back around
and around again. life,
when fed full of love, is:

   —a set of interlocking wheels and cogs,
      in which one small widget is slowing,
      soon to stop;
   —indescribable and inexplicable;
   —the eyes of the one who is loved, spying someone
      else;
   —unbending, unbowed.

we are holding a hungry
tiger by its tail, trying to calm it with the
clumsiest of our
utterances. we are
artless and pushing
for perfection. we
are hopeless yet full
of nothing else. we
are human, whatever
that means. we are
here, and that is what
we must learn to deal with.

truest

when not aware. i wish i knew all the similar-
ities we share with inanimate objects. i want to know what makes
my microwave feel pain. want to know
what makes it smile. or, say, those things which we
keep closest contact to. a belt, a sock, an undershirt.
do they feel each
rise and fall of our sinusoidal emotional motions?
is another person any different from another object.
a matter of the level of abstraction. if something creates heat
is it not alive? if there was some definable, describable
difference between warmth, feeling, and wisdom. but when cold
nothing else even enters into the picture. so what difference
could there be.
the truest form of life. most condensed. heat.
we are more complicated and therefore more diluted, less
alive. a life, so transient, and an inanimate, eternal, if not for life.
still don’t know the difference. time of the plastics: bring it on.
age of the aluminums. no difference. quieter if anything,
at least at first. noise always comes later, later in life.
given a choice to be inanimate: me: i just don’t know.
what of them: would they choose: say a simple punctuation,
a colon: would it want something more, or less, from life?
i don’t presume to know. if you do then you would be a liar,
but what’s keeping you? not i, for i am one too at times.
we each play every role, each lifetime or two. next time i’d
like to be a toaster.

The Jew I Save

By Sidney Boyarin
December 1991

From Ur I walked with Abraham
and knew the knife withheld at Mt. Moriah.

Thus my covenant was born,
My Bond given and my suffering fated
I was not chosen to attain power, to master nations,
To accumulate wealth for its own sake,
But to give inspiration to all who see,
To aspire to realization of the divine in all.

In Sura gray beards pondered
And left the lesson that to be chosen
Is exultation, the reward of the covenant.
I ask, “But why the suffering, the almost unbearable pain of centuries?”
I hear the answer, “So you can know.”

“So I can know?” I ask. YES.
KNOW! The eighth day cry is only the beginning.
And the Song of Songs not the glory,
And glory not the goal.

Israel seek not thy dimension
In widening flat parameters.
Your might can only be a light that leads the nations
In ever ascending roads to Peace
And Hillel’s rules carry all ever higher
With hopes and hearts uplifted.

Thus I see my peculiar fix –
A mix – of pain and work.
And exultation maybe:
Yet this I choose. A Jew to be.

Now the first light brings sharply etched understanding.
In God’s world I am only a renter,
And the security I pledged for my tenancy
Is the well-being of my generations.
The Jew in me must mark it well.
The Jew in me is the one I save!

a wind upon the cheek

the door opens & death
dances around us &
we feel it creeping up our
skin, its fingers finding their way toward
our throats. for only a moment
the door is open,
or a day, yet in that
darkness we see more than we’ve
ever beheld in the
rest of our lives, all at once,
when suddenly somebody
is gone. we march on,
into a new year, into a new
set of circumstances, with
one less than when we’d begun.
the door is closed now and we each
breathe a sigh of relief, for
we are the ones who are here,
still here for a while, until one
day it must open again,
and it is we who are
summoned to step silently through
to the other side.

late in the year / love after lunch

love in the afternoon, love
after dinner, love as he
is dying. i love him, and
why not. a heart as big as his
would make a killing
on the black market.