a sunday poem
8/11/24
Bereshit
In the beginning she was formless and messy starting over days blending into night. Laundry piled up on the bed like a heaping mate-decoy. She wept in her pizza and wondered where all her people were. God hovered over her formlessness with night wings in the unity of all things and separated her tears from her food. From Her own completeness God created division - the useful kind - within this one. Deep breaths from gasps for air. Hope from fear. Self-differentiation. Irrational thought from peace. God divided Grief from Joy by just a hairline and then rested. In the beginning She was already halfway through her life. Wisdom slept in her primordial emotional landscape and separated The Abyss from Dry Sunny Land. God looked upon her and They said “You are love. You are complete.” They who knew the sunsets of yesterday created future and present. They who knew female and male knit the two together within her. She went about her days writing her doctoral thesis, thus studying snakes, Hebrew, bears and a fear. “Does a bereshit in the woods?” She snorted at her own jokes, thinking of her Jewish grandfather and feeling his smile. She was surrounded. She watched bad crime stories, separated laundry - towels from shirts. Ran hot water over cold dishes. Fed the dog and spoke his name like a brother. She stood outside with her feet in the grass and practiced energy breathing, pulling life force up from the firmament and down from the heavens. She ran errands for the young-adult children flying the nest and wandered among the trees in the back garden, naming the birds and feeding them peanuts. Maybe they would learn to land on her hands like they did on YouTube. She rested. Slept like never before. The memories of the old world brought more tears. She traced them and didn't turn from them and longed for all the love she had ever known, aching for more. Light and dark commingled within her. What apple? She had already eaten so many of them. This was her second garden. Maybe her third. Here is the co-created crowning moment of this creation narrative and when it happened the heavens broke into sphere-song: One morning she stretched and yawned and didn't long for what she didn't have or know. She finally did not believe Wisdom resided outside of the perfectly created ecosystem bearing her name, but instead welcomed it to lead her from inside, out of the garden, when it was time. and in that moment she became her own namesake: