Ritual Forgiveness

For years afterward I ritually forgave you
by email during the High Holy Days
not that you're even Jewish
or asked me to.

It wasn't until this "me too" epidemic
that we actually talked about it
on the phone.

I was surprised how hard that was
for both of us.

I'm not angry anymore
but felt fearful, charged.

So maybe I don't really forgive you
because if I did
why was it so hard?

Dear Facebook

I appreciate your help and consolation
in times of trouble and pain
but I want to know who's in control
who's mirroring whom

I can go for weeks without you
yet as soon as I log in I'm hooked

Anyway how do 2 billion people
have time to like and dislike?
If that many people read and access the internet
what else could we do if we set our minds to it?

Because you only show me more of the same
and I become stale repeating you.
It's been 11 years. Time to grow up.
I know that to you I'm just data.

I want to reach my arms across the page
and touch another living constellation
until we save each other and the world!

Writing Words on the Page

Writing words on the page
Instead of configuring them in my head
Crumbs on the table
I'm itching to wipe clean
Candles, almost burned
Water, half full, half drunk
Sunset, about to happen
Guitar and cello waiting to be played
Writing a poem now
Is like dredging the bottom of a dry lake
Where once in a thousand years
The rain buckets down
Out of a clear blue sky

Pantoum

Writing a pantoum is like
Following a knitting pattern
You want to make your own but
Sometimes that ends up crazy

Following a knitting pattern
Is like following the news
Sometimes that ends up crazy
Especially when Trump

Is following the news
Tweeting threats and accusations
Especially when Trump
Don't know what from what

Tweeting threats and accusations
You want to make your own but
Don't know what from what
Writing a pantoum is like

Explaining Music to Someone Who Is Deaf

I clap-clap-clap on your hand
That is rhythm, the beat
Then move up your arm, shoulder, head
That is pitch
You can stroke gently or smack hard
Two places at once
Your body is an orchestra
We get up and dance
Making music with our feet
Sometimes together, sometimes apart
Now send your voice
Up out of the top of your head
Down in your belly
We listen to Beethoven's 5th
Fingers touching the speakers
And imagine swimming in the ocean
In the middle of a storm
You know, Beethoven was deaf...

Jim'll Fix It

I loved that show
when I was 5-7
dreaming of being on TV
making my own musical instrument
from empty gallon milk bottles and string
a cross between a tuba and a guitar
But mostly I just loved Jimmy Saville
staying up late to watch him
as a gameshow host, or on Top of the Pops
Fortunately I never wrote in
He turned out to be a big pedophile
abusing the kids on his show

The New[est] Colossus

Not like the ancient Chinese monument
With terracotta soldiers standing guard
Here at our Southern desert shall stand proud
A mighty wall with border regiment
Whose automatic weapons don't relent
Their sights on those that traveled far and hard
Surviving wars, escaping poverty
To reach this land of equal, free intent

"Keep, hopeful folk, your harrowed dreams," cries he
With armored gates. "Give me your labor your
Lives, your children's lives, their children for free
I have detention centers crying more
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me
I raise my golf course behind the spiked wall.

Refuge

Sleeping out on the roof I hear them
Lions roaring in the jungle refuge
When I swim across the lake they are closer
They make me jump, thinking of crocodiles

But really this ashram refuge is for foreigners
We come and go in little groups
With a minimum three night stay
Rising before dawn to chant at the hilltop shrine
No competition for the cacophony of loudspeaker prayers
Waking the predawn chorus of birds and monkeys
Waking the lions

When it starts raining
Even I come into the dorm

Elegy for a Bathtub

I sit in this perfectly good jacuzzi tub
mourning our old bathtub
the one with easily room for three
where we once got high with our lover
by the light of teacandles in Mason jars
The bathtub you warmed for me
splashing jugs of hot water on the sides
in the cold, woodstove heated house
where we exchanged nightly foot rubs
each knowing exactly what the other liked
Of course I can turn on the jets now
but where would you fit in?
You've gone wild in the unwashed woods
and the bathtub has a new family.

My Heart Dances

My heart dances
when I think of your face
and know that
you're feeling me too
- knowing love 

Blue

Is my favorite color
Because it's closest to transparent
Which I thought was a color
When I was five
Blue
Is the color of
Clear air and water
When they are thick
Like skies and oceans
The color of Earth
From space
The word
Blue
On the page
Doesn't capture
The blue of my imagination
Which is pools of shadow
Curtains of light
The world to a dolphin
Getting lost
In my own eyes

My Ancestors Always

My ancestors always
Put brains before brawn
Yet one served in the Cossack Army
(Another bound his own feet
to be too disabled to serve)
My ancestors traveled around the world
Spoke many languages
Founded a synagogue in Germany
Founded a village in Israel
Changed their name every generation
Kept the Sabbath
Many were visual artists
Were independent women before their time
My ancestors were learned people
Knew how to strike a deal
But didn't know how to be wrong
or to apologize

To My Brother Yannai

You never had a chance
Not with the bad genes
Giving you allergies
To what others call food
A near death experience
Life flashing before your eyes
The bright light
From vegetarian lentil bake
Our dad killed in a mugging
After he told you someone was following him
You left on the platform guarding his luggage
Two weeks after saying last goodbyes to our grandfather
Being mistaken for another at a nightclub
Left for dead in the street
Jaw broken in four places
Relearning to eat solid food
In Italy, in a strange language
On your way to medical school
Asking the doctor about the purple bruises
Suddenly appearing on your arms and legs

A year after your nephew's 6th birthday
Drinking a beer, looking on the bright side
We were saying Kaddish for you
With a roomful of your friends
We never expected so many
You were a kind and generous young man

I was alone holding your warm, puffy hand
When the heart monitor flatlined
And I didn't know what to say or do

Our mother used to take us to the desert
In Israel, when our allergies were bad
As her parents sent her to the Karoo in Africa
Believing the sun, the dry unpolluted air
Were good for lungs, skin

I wish now I had asked how you were
really
Instead of joking and making ok

There will always be more guilt tears
More fire and sun to dry them

The Presence of God Is

The presence of God is
clouds moving ever so slowly toward me
wind whispering in creosote bushes
minute flowers growing on tiny plants
that think the Universe is awesome
bodies in motion doing yoga
flies buzzing, maybe bees

The desert has ears
is listening to itself

The absence of desire is the presence of God
or Gods, Goddesses
Does the dry creekbed long for water?

I am food for little bees
I hope they don't sting me

What is Work?

Work is the sacrifices we make
for what we love
sometimes you have to keep trying
to listen even if it hurts
even if your loved one is still hurting
to feed and have your offer rejected
again and again

Passover in the Desert

This isn't my first
Passover in the Desert
but first organized as a 'Festival'
I've broken matzah with kids from the next camp
at Saline Valley, who gave me eggs
It was their first Passover
though they were (culturally? ethnically?) Jewish
My boyfriend's ex came over from the festival
that's how I first heard about it
she offroaded alone in an SUV all the way to Saline
We did acroyoga on the lawn by the hotspring together
then she left with a broken heart after he and I kissed
He was blind and didn't see her nearby
I was blind to the impacts of kissing on hearts

Now I'm going to the festival
with my new sweetheart
in a place we've never been before
in loving, where kissing makes the heart miss a beat
Perhaps we needed a generation of wandering
before coming home

What is Work

Work is what you do
Labor without love
Energy expanded in kiloJoules
It takes force to do work
Power is the rate at which work is done
Work is done then forgotten
Therefore it lasts, according to Lao Tzu
Work is a value in our society
We work too much, work ourselves sick
My work is listening to the problems
If you don't work you're broken
Work is having a purpose
This is a work of art
To make you think

Telescope Peak

On the way back we fantasize
About hiking Telescope Peak next time
Camping at Wildrose, waking early
Doing it as a day hike, or maybe
In summer, camping high up
With a view of Death Valley
Hitting the springs on the way down for water
Just as I imagined 8 years ago
When I first hiked Wildrose alone
In the snow

The Bridge

The bridge ties it in a bow
Not so much across as round the Bay
Bridge, headlands
Each beautiful in themselves
Fused together offer the possibility of return
Sunset, another day
Magnolia blossoms fallen on the road
Another spring

Hawaii Snapshot

Caught in the wave like flies in amber
Swimmers and surfers leap between me and the sun
Until under purpling sky they come in one by one
Crashing waves roar like lava
Exploding around lava rock
Blasting with heat the tourist pilgrims
Trailing over the crust, a swarm of flashlights
The Earth forming and re-forming
Braiding herself with herself
Immortalizing the flow in glass
The wild-haired palm tree anchored to the shore
The kid zipping back and forth in the breakers
Cares equally for starfish
As the star-formed humans in the wave
Not at all
And the moment is now
And the word is