Jonathan Garfinkel’s Glass Psalms found their way into my mailbox yesterday.
A bright-grey Monday.
My borrowed wireless connection down.
My apartment drowning in construction site sounds.
In a procrastination stained undershirt I lay down to read.
A fat housefly droned a monotone davvening route around the room.
Prayed at the closed window for summer not to be over.
The Saint Urbain Street trees leaned toward red.
The noon-hour traffic stop-and-go windshield glare.
Wrote dry leaf shadow scripts across the cracked walls of my salon-double.
The week before Rosh Hashanah.
The last few pages of the year ink-smudged and dog-eared.
And me impatient for something new.
Glass Psalms found their way into my mailbox.
Garfinkel writes:
On Rosh Hashonah it is written
The universe
a Gothic Romance
God carries around
in Her pocket.
God the novelist,
ventriloquist and invisible
comic. We
the ink,
slip carefully
toward the page…
Thank you Jonathan, for Psalms at just the right time.
l’shanah tova, JR
. . . . .