[with 2 poems by Richard Chess]
Yesterday my teenage grandson reported that he had run into the father of his own father’s best friend at Trader Joe’s. And he told me he’s 82. I can’t believe that. I soberly reminded him that next year on 11 February I will turn 70. When you’re 70, I informed him, I guess you’re officially old.
My grandson nodded. (Did he have to agree with me quite so quickly?) Then he shrugged, But you’re a child at heart, Pappy. You’ll be OK.
When I told this to my wife later for laughs, she agreed at once. Of course. She thinks she knows exactly what our grandson means. Whenever our seven-year old arrives for the afternoon, her immediate mantra is, Play, Pappy! The funny songs I make up, the games invented, the animal voices and dumb jokes – a playmate, that’s me.
No. There’s no connection between childish and child-like. The former is fun and funny, a diversion; the latter is as serious as time and time’s end. I desire to become child-like and it is a struggle. Or I make it a struggle. Self-inflicted pain wakes me after midnight recalling hurts I’ve caused in times past; worries about indeterminate futures refuse to allow sleep to return. Of course. Who doesn’t worry about their children’s choices, their aging parent’s decline? Who doesn’t have drama and bullshit to put up with? Who, after all, sleeps soundly?
Last night I watched my granddaughter sleep. Utterly relaxed, an exhausted kitten. Breathe in, breathe out. May a bit of her child-like flow into me? This morning she is bouncing and singing and I will clearly have to make time much later for any silent meditation or prayer. Hmm, awkward constuct there, making time. Time is making me. The made up songs, the made up worries, may they flow as they will and may I cease my furious resistance to the flow. May a child’s song be the prayer I need. Trust my heart – I will be OK.
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Tashlikh 5773
++++ “And you will cast all their sins into the
++++ depth of the sea” – Micah 7
++++ Tashlikh: a ritual of symbolically casting
++++ one’s sins into a moving body of water
++++ performed on Rosh Hashanah afternoon
Into this
shallow
creek,
into this
narrow
gesture
of land,
this
slow
discourse
of water,
I empty
my holiday
pockets,
a year’s
crumbs
of gossip,
I empty
my eyes
of lust,
my heart
of unsym-
pathetic joy
over his
fortune,
I empty
my hand
of the fist
and my mouth
of silence
where there
should have
been cries
of injustice,
I empty even
the emptiness
of vows I
made last
night, before
the open
heart of
this synogogue,
this wounded
house of
prayer;
into this
trickle
I empty the
comfort
of ritual
so that I
may stand
stripped to
the bone
of creation,
whthou
a deed
to just
ify my
life, this
life, carried
now only
by the current
of Your mercy.
Richard Chess
from Love Nailed to the Doorpost, University of Tampa Press, (c) 2017
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A mentor from my days of medical training introduced me to Richard Chess last year. (Thank you, Jessica!). His essays in SLANT invariably lift me from my complacent path and set me back down in fields of thoughts like unfamiliar flora; I spend days exploring, learning. What seemed unfamiliar was really already some part of me waiting to be discovered. The personal searching of Richard’s writing invites me, us, to pass through a door that opens into all that makes us human, into all that makes us unique and at once all we share.
More recently, I’ve read Richard’s poetry in Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Unsettling, provoking, unique and uniquely demanding. His personal moments of awareness entwine and intermingle with spiritual mythmaking and retelling of Torah. It is a journey of confession and redemption, of certainty and profound doubt. By the end of the book I’m exhausted by the struggle with my own doubts. But might not doubt be the beginning of faith? I believe there is a benediction available through these poems – beating, beating, beating our heart, our stubborn, collective heart into submission, into awareness, into life.
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Richard Chess directed the Center for Jewish Studies at UNC Asheville for 30 years. He helps lead UNC Asheville’s contemplative inquiry initiative. He is a board member for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
More by Richard Chess . . .
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The Huppah
In the sixth or seventy year
of their marriage, the huppah
was stolen. I had absorbed
the love that was consecrated
under it, or it had absorbed nothing
and was merely fabric zipped
into a bag of of no value
to the theif, or it ws a thin
blanket to cover his little girl
on an autumn night, or it was a wrap
with a rainbow of stripes
knotted around his woman
before and after a good fuck.
Of no use to a guy looking
for a quick fix of his broken life,
it may have been tossed into bushes
outside a church or into dumpster.
The huppah had no mouth
to sing the bride’s song,
here I am, take me home.
It had no money to pay
for space in a closet or a drawer
in some row-house. Though it looked
like it could have belonged to a magic
act, it knew no tricks, it could not assist
in sleight-of-hand. Though it looked
sacred, ti could not purify human flesh.
It’s been a dozen years
since the huppah was taken from them,
since it went out into a city of mustard
and minute steak, of a cracked bell and hall
of freedom, and whether it was hauled
to a landfill with all the other refuse
of a fat city, or tacked to a wall and draped
over a window to keep a brother, a cop
from stealing a look at a brother’s girl
moving toward him with all that’s good
to eat, or whether it was offered
to an oil drum’s angry fire
around which six day laborers gather
waiting for the dock to open –
it’s all the same to them. The mortgage
is hungry and must be fed. The children
are stupid and must be prodded
toward the pen where they will be civilized
and milked. The marriage is short
on memory and must be consecrated
again and again, with a glance that shoots
from bride to groom, groom to bride
under the huppah of sky
that fills with clouds and empties, that trembles
dark and light, that must be held in place
by some angels, maybe the same angels
that held their original huppah
for the brief ceremony that preceded
the long ordeal and party of love.
Richard Chess
from Love Nailed to the Doorpost, University of Tampa Press, (c) 2017
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 