Chancel

And now I bow
In the nave
I built with my
Own hands
A force of will
Maybe, and of
Hope, and strength
And love, and
Power, and good
Ness and weak
Ness and sacrifice
And longing and
Grief and beginning
I kneel before this
Altar to my dreams
Before I burn
It down, before
The doing and
Undoing pulse
Through my being
And there it is
Again, my knowing
In the unknowing
That this temple
This altar this
Divine expression
Must ignite, must
Burn, must be made
Into ash, and thereby
Made into everything
That comes after–
The garden, the
Synagogue, the holiest
Holy, of all the sacred
Spaces, filled with the
Breath, the Fire of the
Divine Universe intoned
In your throat, in your
Heart, in your center
Melted to make
Way for something New

Gift

Sometimes the memories
And myths that were woven
Into your childhood become
Magic again to your arcing
Soul. The songs that break
Forth in trumpets. The
Prayers that end in good
Tidings. The trees all
Dressed in snow and stars
Light against long December
Nights which beg gathering
And joy-filled repasts

Roads Taken

Two roads diverged in a snowy wood
And knowingly, quiet and somber I stood,
looking out on the starry, moonlit way
then took the path that had already been trod

With careful foot-fall through the hoary frost,
after the ribbon of travelers who’d crossed
the fork in the road, the decision place
And rather than test the dark and the cold

I took the chance to walk along
where others had gone, and bend my care
instead to perceiving the moment, the present
The here, the now, the trees and the fences

I shall be telling this in an age
from maiden, to matron, to crone, to sage,
I took the road that many had paved
And made it my journey, anyway

Braid

dark and light
strands of fermion
behavior spin
good
evil
if they
exist
tethered
whole
to the same
fate maybe
driving Dirac’s
trick
as truth
every particle
we are made of
even distantly
is woven, connected
to the cosmological
horizon, all tangled up,
simultaneously unspun
strand by strand into
infinity