The stanzas of this poem are structured around the mystical letters in the Hebrew word “Yesod.”
Draw from me, and I from you.
Let us mingle a new moon
Life and Death
Summer, Winter
Beginning, End.
You — Yesod — our foundation.
Shake us.
Rattle our world.
Propel us forward,
and facing
this shared nakedness,
a clock of idleness
abandoned on the sapphire floor,
the stars, around us, find realignment.
Yod
Hand and power,
Thrusting into our collective existence.
Our private, wondrous
world to come.
This promised, promising journey.
A primordial and holy exodus,
yet incomplete,
the frenetic motion of Yetzirah.
You come:
A concentration of all that is infinite.
A drop.
The drop,
the one I taste.
Samekh
The secret — our sod
This “shield” covering
an unfurling “mysterious” sodi.
That glorious tension.
Now we comfort.
Now we are comforted.
Now we praise.
Now we are praised.
Now we give.
Now we receive.
Through seasons turning at a dizzying pace,
a fluid interdependence,
our firm independence.
Come, my love,
let us cast off thread-bare coverings:
Wrap ourselves at the threshold of a sukkahLit. hut or booth A temporary hut constructed outdoors for use during Sukkot, the autumn harvest festival. Many Jews observe the mitzvah of living in the Sukkah for the week of Sukkot, including taking their meals and sleeping in the Sukkah.
raised for us.
Dalet
This weightiness is not lost.
We are pushed down,
bowing to the earth,
kissing the ground.
Our bodies, the soil,
our senses,
the rites of passage.
This place of four:
The directions;
The seasons;
The chambers of the heart.
A renewed cosmology.
God’s secret, breath filled, Holy name
exchanged between us,
while stars find realignment.
