When I Come Home on Friday Evening,
You Immediately Tell Me about Your Day for Five Minutes Without Pausing
—for Elizabeth Rose Shaffer

                                                                                    Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.
                                                                                    All real living is meeting.

                                                                                                                     – Martin Buber

The thoughts of my day are busy
with bread, twisted as the winds
of the priestly turbans. All

day they have borne your memory
on staves through golden rings.
Now, with calloused hands,

they trim the lamps, veil
their light in the incense of all
they would recite before you.

But when you open the door
of the temple we have built,
there is no space for my words

amidst yours. My thoughts
cannot stand to minister
for the presence of the cloud

of your eager joy. Dumb-
struck, I call you thou;
I see you face-to-face.





When You Tell Me There Are Too Many Footnotes

              —for Elizabeth Rose Shaffer

On Simchas Torah, we read from Genesis before we pray for rain—
wish no weight upon the land before there is land to support it.

Every miracle is worked atop a greater. Just as at the Passover,
each would be enough. A lifetime I have gathered dew in the wilderness;

I have filled my cloud-light head with drops of Torah—drawn them up
until it is grey and sinking and tired. It is not enough, and still,

I will pray for no more than what can land upon your shoulder.





First Day

       —for Elizabeth Rose Shaffer

We met on a Saturday in a diner
full of quiet dishes.
Dampening snow hung
in buntings from the lampposts
like a wasted eruv as we sat,
still, on the floor of your apartment.

Us and Lady Day.

That night, you told me
you say everything that comes
into your mind, and I said
that I love that about you.
I listened to your words
drop like linden blossoms

till the quiet began to take us.

There was a moment after, on the way
to my car, when I thought perhaps
I had never met anyone
like you. But then the light
caught where your hand had brushed
mine, and the night ended

in three flecks of glitter.
Candle, wine, and clove.

First day.
God speaks everything
again.