Green confetti for Bunny Rabbi

SOLOMON’S SEAL

Morning sunlight on the riverbank.

Old bridge in the background.

Hubbub of human sound

gone quiet here – some time to think.

The ranks of cottonwoods draw shapes

in four dimensions – homesick

willows by Euphrates,

brooding vaults of shady Chartres,

cloisters clad with marigolds

on orange heights (Monte

Cassino) – where they

summon up papyrus scrolls

like hopeful honeybees, reviving

scribble-cribs in royal reels

of pearly Solomon’s seal –

fern, aloe, acacia... (ever-living

green confetti, for Easter Rabbi).

I pace these precincts with

a vagrant slouch, as if

I’d missed the point.  & then I see

you! – bright invincible

companion – always there

in your cloud-rocking chair

at End of Time, & trouble –

familiar storyteller, Indian Guide

whose hearth blazes from Southern

Cross to blue Vermilion – within

Love’s angled arc (smile-wide).

3.25.16

& speaking of heaven, I just finished Wm. Dalrymple's travel book, From the Holy Mountain (Owl Bks, 1997). He retraces the steps of 6th century peripatetic Byzantine monk named John Moschos, who kept a journal of his own (The Spiritual Meadow). Dalrymple's book is a remarkably vivid 1st-hand report on the fading (or maybe surviving - some of these hermit monks are amazingly resilient) remnants of various strands of ancient eastern Christianity still hanging on in monasteries scattered through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel & Egypt. A unique lens on the Middle East.