Tishrei

 

Since you are half a planet away

You will have to imagine yourself

At the table, make yourself a place
 

As a book makes a place for itself

In the gap between its companions

When a hand pulls it from the shelf

 

To be read, culled, or simply mulled upon

For the touch of other hands that last

Placed it there, unopened or opened

At random. Imagine, too, the guests,

Random snatches of conversation,

Another syncope before bless-

 

-sing and breaking of bread, and then

Resumed talk like snowfall or leaf-fall,
Slow, silent drift of attention.

 

Can you hear them? Young boys keeping a ball

Aloft, clean limbs flashing in last summer

Sunlight, so too voices catching a small

 

Feather of talk, lofting it skyward

Again so it turns and dances in the room's

High reaches and lamplight. Elsewhere, air

 

Full of late summer dust and goldenrod bloom

So the boys seem to swim in rich delight,

Here another trick of substance sweeping down

 

From low passes, Mediterranean light

Over our mountaintop city, or when

Desert winds blow from the east, the bright

 

Air scoured clean of absolutely everything

But harsh electricity. We shelter

In closer air from the kitchen,

 

At the table, facing each other,

Let our voices' deft in-and-out stitch

A patterned tent where we dwell together—

 

—Imagine this glittering fabric, a hitch

Every now and then as the wind blows through,

The circled guests' intelligent rich

 

Repartee pausing, just slightly askew,
Half a planet away, suddenly you.