You were only waiting...

For a long time, I have carried around with me a very depressing mental image for the Beatles song "Blackbird". I would relate it here, but I've been told by enough people that it ruined their enjoyment of the song so I usually just keep it to myself.

Not that my mental image inhibited my own love of the song. I took a fond, if somewhat morbidly melancholy, pleasure in singing it and hearing it performed. But it was never a happy song.

Now, when my son Joram (who is now 6) was a baby we had this routine. He was hard to put to sleep, so we would rock in the chair and I would pat his back. With significant force. No namby-pamby girly-man taps for him. He would only settle down if you gave him room-echoing "whomps" with your whole hand. And it wasn't that slow, heartbeat type rhythm that seems so soothing. Joram preferred a medium-to-fast beat. So there I am, pounding out a steady rhythm and rocking him to sleep when I realize

(pat pat pat pat)
Blackbird singin' in the dead of night
(pat pat pat pat)
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
(pat pat pat)
All your life
(pat pat pat)
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive

In that moment of discovery, several things came together for me and were resolved - my concern about having a son; the personal upheaval of that time - a job change, a country change, a new child; and so on. And above it all was the immediate and complete transformation of that song into something positive and hopeful. The lyrics took on new and very personal meaning, and I knew I would never hear it the same way again.

It is said that encounters with God (however you envision God) are transformative. Torah shows this with so many name changes (Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob ("heel") becomes Israel ("God wrestler").) Upon meeting Moses, even God gets a name change to YHWH ("I am that I am becoming").

Love (everyone say it with me: "twu wuv") is deeply transforming. As is deep tragedy, or sudden loss. However it happens, if you meet up with God in some way, you can't remain the same.

By reverse logic, finding yourself transformed is evidence of an encounter with God. In that instant of change for Joram and I, Shechinah (another name for God, meaning "her spirit which surrounds us") came into the room.

I think Mr. McCartney would be proud.

POEM: Elegy

You wail in counterpoint to the church bells
Ringing down the road from the clinic
9 times they tolled, as if to say "enough, enough"
Or perhaps "so soon"

My mind a study of indecision.
In my heart, I am holding off death
In one moment
And urging it on in the next

"It's not fair to let them suffer"
But are you "them", or am I?
Who is spared, and who condemned?

I watch the syringe deliver sleep into your veins.
I hold you, oblivious to your lack of control
I croon your favorite story in your ear
The one you would overcome stairs and the dog and old age
To hear every bedtime

Your eyes never close

All the men of our house, the fraternity you left behind
Dig your grave
The world, drained by your absence of any warmth
Weeps ice instead of tears

POEM: work session

You:
Eyes wide like a horse about to spook
Sideways staring at my fingers on the keyboard
As if they are medusae-snakes, ready to betray you at any moment
Capture you and bind you and force you into
The impossible labor of sentences and grammar

Me:
Head thrown back, eyes unfocused,
fingers bucking and jumping on the keys like 15 year old driving a stick-shift
Brain firing on all cylenders at the same time
Unable to hold onto just half of one thought
As your steady stream of ideas,
Each one thesis-worthy
Race by me

The words:
Twist and writhe on paper
Despairing of their limitation, their solid singlular concrete meaning
Desperate to break the bonds that hold them fast
To leap off the page, to be able to shift and change and transform
both themselves and those who view them
To rise again in the mind, in the air between us
Where your brain gave them birth
And your lips gave them flight