AKEL DAMA

"There's a hole in the roof/why don't you send your man up to fix it?"

The ground squirrel sprawls under the Phoenix mesquite
as if to straddle the entire adobe wall
and crush it beneath his silent gnashing of teeth.
Tiny birds, tinier leaves, flecks of sunlight
converge and the cavity is evacuated.

The seed pod is broken,
its contents consumed,
and you want to stay here?

Each tear
is preserved in the eye of God

Each seed
dies drooping from the mouth of the earth

Each booth tilted and
pierced by its very foundation.


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No, this is not Kabbala poetry; it's the last poem that I wrote, over 30 years ago, when Stephen was a baby and seemed so vulnerable in the face of the overwhelming heat.  I in fact put Stephen at risk on that visit--so was probably feeling not only as vulnerable as a new parent is bound to feel, but also guilty for taking him on long walks in the rocky crest above Flo's parents' house. We came very close one time to plunging headlong into the rocks because I had Stephen in one arm,was off balance, and couldn't find a safe way down because we were off the beaten path.

I offer this as a contrast to what I will post later from a Kabbalic author. Not so much because the poems and songs are so superior to mine in workmanship--as they truly are--but because of the truism that great love covers over "a multitude of sins."--but that we have very strange and personal ways of expressing that love; which can even cover the unconscious, the parable, and the paradigm...when rightly interpreted, that is..."is of no private interpretation."