Seattle 143, or poem-a-day #300

They ignore me, mostly.

Not impolitely -

they are obedient

as crocuses,

perfectly willing

to take the broom

or mop

or towel

and complete their chores

without my asking,

or to say "good!"

and flash me a thumbs-up

when I serve them food.

We color together;

today we carved a pumpkin.

They cracked roasted seeds

between their teeth, suckled

the salt.

Their conversations

bounce across the rooms,

missing me each time.

My workday

is not quite loneliness

or boredom,

but draws a card from each.

Sandra comes out of her room

with a plastic bag in her hand,

offers the contents around.

When she reaches me,

I look into her palms,

take a piece of dried fruit

covered in spices,

take a bite.

I smile, flash her a thumbs-up.

"Bueno!"

She chatters at me in Spanish

for a few seconds,

before both our faces fall

in that familiar way

of Babel.

Finally, she says

"Mannngooo"

and

"Mi Mamaaa,"

with a kind of patience.

I smile.

"Mango - tu mama."

And she smiles.

And we nod,

chewing,

this other woman's home

reaching my throat.

Seattle 142, or Tastes of my new home

Autumn in Seattle leaves me an odd mix of restless and sluggish. There's lots of news: I have a new job, working with homeless youth. It's different than my old job; they're older, more functional. No restraints. No side-hugs. No laundry. No monitoring every conversation between clients. Clients that can sustain a conversation, though - that's awesome.

Last week, I started craving chopped liver. It's not something I ate all the time as a kid - just often enough to remember how much I liked it - earthy, salty, with hints of egg and onion. In my grandmother's Queens apartment, they served it in a cut glass bowl. I pinched mouthfuls when no one was looking; the adults always spread a thin layer over crackers and rye bread. "Too rich," I was told when I asked for a spoonful.

Sometimes, when my other grandmother was roasting chicken, I'd catch her before she tossed the liver and beg her to fry it up for me. She always did, muttering about cholesterol as she flipped it in the pan.

At the store, they sell them frozen, six or seven in a package, for cheap. I looked up a few recipes online, found the basic ingredients and set to work. The livers went under the broiler, salted, their thick smell stampeding through the house. Masha came home, smiling. My once-Swiss landlord came by, leaned against the counter and took a long sniff. "We used to fry them in butter, as hot as we could," she said. I explained why I was using olive oil, mincing onions to throw in the pan after the livers.

She stayed while I mixed, boiled and chopped, eating slices of the rye bread I'd bought to go with it. No time to start a fresh sourdough.

The smell of onions is home. The smell of liver is comfort, the promise of luxury to come. The eggs, perfectly hardboiled and chopped, turn it creamy, as does the spoonful of unorthodox mustard. Landlord and I eat half-sandwiches, topped with little vinegar pickles in the late afternoon sun. She closes her eyes as she chews, saying "it's different, of course, but you can't beat that taste. It's so humble."

This is me making home: a collection of tastes and smells and sounds that didn't come from anywhere but my own heart. It's the most honest thing I know how to do. And you may not see where it came from, may call it pretense, fabrication, construction - there are so many names for the things we don't understand, the things we also call G!d.

I am telling you: this is where I come from, now. I come from my kitchen, wherever it is.

Seattle 141, or Poem-a-day #276

The Bravest Thing My Mother Ever Did

was not the years of shoulderpad armor,
of being the only woman to slip
and chew her way to the board rooms
and corner offices,
but what happened after:

the night she told us
she couldn't do it anymore,
she asked our permission

to put her compass
in her pocket
and ask the stars
for directions.

When I consider
how alike we are,
I don't know how she did it -
wandered restless
for so many months,
believing she could do anything.

Seattle 140, or Gratuitous Food

For a girl who hated melted cheese in most forms, it surprised everyone when I turned into a mac and cheese hound in college. This particularly decadent effort includes a cream so thick it had turned to butter in the bottle, three kinds of cheese - cheddar, feta and pecorino romano - sundried tomatoes, shredded greens and sauteed mushrooms. Baked in my trusty cast iron, of course.

My father hates beets, but he enjoyed the purplish carrots in this pile of roasted veg from the summer. The carrots, I am sure, came from the eccentric gardener a few miles down the road who runs a plumbing parts store out of the back of his mother's house. He grows the sweetest tomatoes I've ever had. And, when he's in a good mood, he lets me harvest carrots.

An early-summer study in simplicity - the fava beans were an experiment, to see what I could pull off. I don't recommend making fava beans alone. There's simply too much labor involved to only serve one person. One requires at least one admirer. The bread is pumpernickel, from the bakery. The egg, from my egg lady at the market - the one who sells goat meat and asks me about my knee. The beets and favas came straight from the farm box that gets delivered once a week in the summer.

Seattle 139, or Sukkot

And when we have fasted, prayed, felt the twisting of our bodies and hearts, cried out to the heavens (to ourselves?) for forgiveness, and when there is nothing left inside...

we build. We reach. We put up walls made of cloth, and a roof of branches and say, "Come in. We've spent the last week figuring out that life is only as solid as the winds and the rain will allow, but today there's sunshine. So, come. Sit. Feast."

All photo credits to Debs Gardner.

Seattle 138, or Poem-a-day #258

Piyyut for T'Shuvah

And what if I'm not ready?
And what if others deem my wrongdoings
unforgivable?
And what if I don't really mean my apologies?
And what if they don't mean theirs?
And what if the thought
of even approaching some of those I've wronged
has me sick and shaking?
And what if the thought
of some of them approaching me
hardens and sharpens my willng tongue?
And what if it's embarrassing to have wronged so many I love so much?
And what if they do forgive me?
What then?

Seattle 137, or Rosh Hashanna

It started early this year. Not just in the way it bumped up against Labor day, or spun into Shabbat, making for 3 major dinners in a single week at the Kibbutz. Not just that the days are still long enough to take post-shul naps and wake up long before the sun goes down. This year, it started with the Machzor.

A Machzor is the specific prayerbook used for High Holy Days - Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur. That's it. A whole book for two holidays. Because they're used so seldomly, they sit on the high shelves, keeping watch as we keep the rest of the lower shelf books from gathering dust. They're hardly ever updated or rewritten - who wants to spend so much on a book we use twice a year?

Luckily, someone in the Conservative movement decided it was time - about twelve years ago. And true to form, they've been working on producing this book ever since, complete with halting starts and funding crises. I first caught wind of the project a few years ago, back in Massachusetts, when a congregation I was davening (praying) with was chosen to test-drive a chunk of the new Machzor.

I loved it so much I sneaked it home in my tallis bag, and kept using it every year. The translations are beautiful. The commentary is diverse, relevant, and well-written. Someone finally decided to stop referring to G!d as "Father" and "King" and "He" - instead we have "G!d" and "Sovereign" "G!d of our Ancestors" - and to stop translating the word Adonai (my lord - nothing wrong with the translation, except that it's awkward and more Christian than anything. Besides, anyone who davens knows what Adonai means.)

This year, as soon as I found out it was finally published, and available, I ordered a copy. I even wrote poems about how excited I was about this book.

Then I got a call from the booksellers.

"We're so sorry," he said, "but there are just too many orders. Yours won't arrive until after Rosh Hashanna."

I was sad, but not distraught. But lo and behold, what should arrive in my mailbox the following day, but a carefully wrapped copy of the new Machzor!

At first, I thought it was the man who called me, taking pity on the young woman with the slight quaver in her voice. But then I noticed: this book was from a different bookseller. When I checked the invoice, I saw that my dear friend Esther had ordered a copy for me weeks ago, and it had arrived just in time for me to use on Rosh Hashanna.

There were other wonderful things about RH this year - I did blow shofar in a synagogue, by the way - but this is what I will remember. The gift of a book. A door into the new year.

Ode to Lev Shalem

You are a door.

Your name means
"full heart," and you
are actually not a door; you are a book,
which also makes you a door,
if you are good at what you do.

I regret being unable
to buy you in a shop,
to choose you from a shelf,
cradle your spine and covers
as I smile at strangers on the street.

The last Jewish bookstore
has disappeared from my neighborhood.
I have bought you sight unseen,
and I am still convinced
that it is one of the most important
purchases I will ever make.

How often does one find
a guide to an overspilling heart?
Who expects to find delight
between the pages of a prayerbook?
I remember the privilege
of proofreading your first pages,
in shul, in prayer, beating my heart,
which had suddenly gone still.
It was like meeting my bashert
in a cafe, and then losing them
to a journey of unspecified length.

When I heard of your arrival,
I felt the same heartquickening
of a lover, returned and ready
to take my hand.

Seattle 136, or new web design

My poetry website was long overdue for some new designs. Check it out!

Also, there will be real writing on here soon. Davka and I have a plan to rejuice each others' blogs.

Seattle 135, or Recovery

Honestly, I don't feel like writing about it. I had knee surgery again - my fifth in as many years. Recovery's been going okay. Right now, this is the most entertaining thing in my life:

Paradox 1, or Upmountain

In the mountains, the beautiful, little green bumphills with that beauty mother lake with the turtle under the dock that tries to snack my toes if I stay unkicking too long. Sucking down emails whenever I come to town, pick up messages, remember the rest of the world - when I'm not pining for them. Read 6 novels this week, and got another five from the little library, where they nod like it's no big deal when I tell them I don't have a phone number.

Glorious seclusion. Sweet, slow starvation. This land is my land. It tousles my hair, teasing of course you'll come back here. We're holding your heart hostage.