The Oldest App

{a poem}

Windows rattle, radiators hiss.
I light a small bird-shaped candle
and start in the middle.

Find my heart: There's an app
for that called silence, prayer, stillness.
Wind, chimes, dog snore, breath.

Listen: Everything you need
to know is here in the deepest dark,
the place where you turn and tumble

reciting the names
of your children, your chosen one,
making sure you will not forget them.

You won't. Once you see that nothing
can ever be lost, you surrender
to the currents of the soul riding

inside an envelope of stars,
where chords and verbs and ancestors
are all one. Words like chesed*

float past until you stop grasping,
carried now by the shapes of song,
the rise and fall of remembering

indigo and flame, candlesticks
and kiddush cups, little birds
and children's books,

Russian dolls and secrets
laid bare open before you
like so many petals.

Every grief pours through,
water from a bottomless cup
of love and loss and love and love.

Here, every apology is accepted.
Here, every breath brings you home.
Here, the great mystery is one.

*lovingkindness

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