The flowers, though, are a deep cadmium yellow and bathe the table in their saturate of light
Deep cadmium yellow is the color I need today, the return to exile in these deep yellow flowers
Their blooms may be wilting but their smell persists in my palate
Not a sweet smell but something turmeric-like that quiets the appetite for intoxicants
The rabbi spoke of a vital capacity for understanding, but what do I understand
not the flag of poetry, not the flag of country or the insane black MIA flag still flying above the statehouse
though I love how the wind slaps them in a simulacrum of freedom
Today as every day I return to exile, the past flooding forward, the future receding
I turn from Jerusalem as a plant turns toward a sun-drenched window
I sit at my table, lift my spoon, and watch the quick and halt going about their business
The dogs of spring are tugging at their leashes
I pet the cat, who wants nothing else of me
I touch the mezuzah and ask the Shekhinah to bless me with her breath of pollen yellow
Let this not be a good day for fear or the fires that destroy villages
This is the day that the cosmos made, let us rejoice and
Today I am thistle down spreading out from my body on the wind
From this perspective I can contemplate how the gas masks Otto Dix depicted
Resemble the screaming faces of blue monkeys gassed in experiments at Porton Down
Silken, gold-flecked tree-dwellers who thrive on figs and flowers
Matrilineal tree-dwellers who pass their infants from arms to arms
Today I walk almost fearless into the box where they press their palms against a wall of glass
Swallowing absence, our mouths distend
Today I walk almost fearless into the dying that overtakes my cousin, Sweet Arlene
Her tongue jittery now from chemo
As if she’s stammering her way to a new language
Where childhood memories surface
On Firglade Avenue, our grandparents’ house
The trees, in fact, deciduous, fir glade whispering through screens on summer Sundays, the tantes fussing
Steam from Old World dumplings floating up from the tureen
Soon, I’ll be the only keeper of the memories that made a family
I don’t trust myself with that much treasure
But here I am, holding out my arms and smiling
Today the woman who reads my body like script on water made a skullcap with one hand and eased the other under my sacrum
My spine became a flute again
Death floated past like thistle silk
Blue monkeys were sleeping in the trees
