Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt
forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs
they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash,
wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace,
lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes,
wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rutpeel
parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust;
stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil
there
Footfretted in it. Million-fueled, nature’s bonfire
burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-
selved spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is
gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous
dark
Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that
shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out;
nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the
Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days,
dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal
trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave
but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I
am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood,
immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
Rabbi Cat’s musings on Parsha Tazria
As I think about what is happening today in Israel and Palestine, I think about the challenges we all face when we are confronted with stories different from those with which we were raised and that held a lot of meaning for us
