Ten Words

What ten words rule you?
Which move you?
Bring you forward
and return you?
What ten words
bow you
and bend you
and fill you full?
Which serve you,
or demand that
you serve?

Which call you
to your journey,
to dive inward,
move outward,
and carry you to distant
trackless shores -
a barren wilderness
that is more vast
than sky,
more filled
than stars
and time?

And yet those words,
those ten,
they carry you -
From all that
you know;

Ten words lift you
into a boundless unknown.
bring you to self;
bring you to God.


For Shavuot
based, in part, on Exodus 34:27, in honor of "Aseret ha'd'brot" - the Ten Words

Ark

I made a house of wood,
Of cubits and inches
and fashioned with tongues
and grooves, and
all the pieces fitted together,
just so.

It was beautiful to behold.

Inside, I placed soft feathers
and stones of quarry gray.
They rested in shadow
and were cold to the touch.

Just so, they burned
my hands



based on Deut. 10:3-5

Head to Heart

The longest journey

begins with a breath -

   breath being one of the names of God -

and ends in Breath:

   as the name of God is a prayer: amen.

It is played out

on a bridge more narrow than fear

and wider than Heaven,

And gathers together

the battered, embattled rubble

of broken days and history.

It is - as if it ever wasn't - love,

that journey of unknown proportion,

Coming not because of,

Nor in spite of.

Love that is whole

And endless

   And love -

      God, yes!

         Love,

             in all its infinite

                 and glorious

                    unknowing

                       boundlessness -

                          Love.

                          Love.

                          That is the journey

                          That is the breath

                          of God.

Amen.

For Tisha B'av