for R. Amichai Lau-Lavie
Rolling backwards the hills became standing waves. Time stopped around them. She worshipped visible beauty, the wounded rose. She loved the sun rising, the sound of cookies baking. She loved a chorus of howler monkeys tearing one note while the ruin below them shook off its centuries and once again stood the proud Jaguar. Words were hardly out of her mouth when they assembled a prayer delicate as a spider web. No one could find the tiny hole in her belly where the invisible jets the visible. Would an earthquake reveal her living parts? Summer closed on schedule and fall stumbled into place drunk on its own honey. On the day of Happiness I will maneuver myself into the narrowest space between the ceiling and the Holy Ark just to catch the rebbe’s face when he dances with the Torah.