shavuot, thoughts

i wrote this whole long thing
but it wasn't very good

i didn't make cheese cake
i didn't want it for myself

what i really wanted was to make it
for you
to eat it with you
taste the milk and honey

in my mind
the first fruits
coming at the end of the count down
festival of weeks
standing at sinai a bride
with the torah some sort of cosmic ketubah
all swirled together with my love for you, beloved
it all assumed a magical realism quality
which, here, without you
i have failed to bring off


i have been thinking about you


and tonight, beloved
it is your skin
your face
there is some quality now
which is refined
starkly handsome in some way
that makes the man you were eight years ago
seem unappealingly under-ripe

and i stand at sinai
feel the rush as the world spins
through space and time
my neshama in the very breath of god

and i pray
i am black but comely
may it please you that he long for me
that he forever seek and find the taste of milk and honey
and i also, our tongues eternally joyful

i touch your cheek
twine my fingers behind your neck
and finally kiss you
with fearful trembling
at the offering of first fruits