Neurology Exam
My neurologist asks me many questions
To make sense of my brain:
What day of the week is it?
Where are you now?
What is your home address?
(What if I am homeless?)
What state are you in?
Where were you born?
What did you eat this morning?
How many fingers am I holding up?
Spaces Between Words
I have attended to your words
One vowel, one consonant,
One syllable at a time, their
Flow into a stream of thought.
Native Wit
Not for lack of native wit
Have cottonwoods prevailed
Upon prairie’s crusted skin.
Brief torrents of summer rain
Fill dry streambeds, soon
Give way to months of drought.
Crocus, tulip, pom-pom, azalea,
forsythia, redbud – they take their
chances with Spring’s early dare.
When, for blooming, nothing else
Remains – enter cottonwoods,
Hearty laggards of the plains.
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Image Credit: Ghostly branches of a cottonwood in spring [photography by Richard Schulte, San Diego, CA]
Two Crossings
I crossed
The river
And took the bridge
With me.
Faith enforced
Left no room for doubt
Later, I crossed
The bridge
And took the river
With me.
Doubt let loose
Left room for faith
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Image credit: Abstract art by Unsplash/Pawel Czerwinski
Kelipoth – Broken Vessels
After the Jewish Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, Israel [1570]
The breaking of the vessels:
Amid strewn shards
Of a coronaviral broken universe,
Tiny sparks of light
Gather quietly, unnoticeably,
And cling to the broken shards
Inside the bowls. Divine light
Flows into them for the work
Of tikkun olam, the mending
Of the world –
Emanations of Eros,
Making whole through love
What neither plague nor hate
Can dispel.
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Image credit: Abstract image [depositphotos]