The irony of this poem is
That I am
Exhausted by words.
Slavish, ephemeral sounds
Carried over ether,
Etched nowhere,
Not even upon the heart.
Swaddled in my tallis,
Amid 100 birthing cries,
Prone, I lay,
Breathing the scent of soil:
The ancestors.
Adamah washes away
A mouthful of summer-fallowed words.
What I have come to crave is the solid.
With soiled hands of an earthly potter,
I sweep away flaked remnants of hope,
That utterances alone
Are powerful enough for human creation.
My hands shall deliver a vessel of clay.
A seal,
Fused with the power of Eish,
Consecration branded into its body:
Salakh.
On these cool autumn days,
As Ruakh once whispered rakhamim
Above a landscape of chaos,
I, in kind,
Exhale depleted letters
Of a departed vision,
Calmly watching them drift,
Settle,
And come to rest.
