Darshan

Hello all!

A new poem for you today (more of Aaron’s epic to come, eventually), one born out of this ongoing revelation, for me, of midrash-ic poetry. I’m realizing that “Darshan” can mean a few things, in different religions, but it was first introduced to me as particularly Jewish, and related to the writing of midrash. The epigraph that I still haven’t decided on is this:

…an old and serious pleasure, the name of which is midrash. —David Curzon

My desk: one of the places where I am weathered by this serious pleasure

Darshan

The poet said it was a pleasure to wonder
at the Word—an ancient pleasure rabbis

(may I say) withered under—and so am I
(not a rabbi) weathered by the restless
text: an open sea on every page. 

Serious pleasure he said it again, then left
a bit of silence wherein a mind might wander—

          Like learning how to dive without a splash?
          Like finally beating Dad at Who can hold 
               their breath the longest?
          Like readiness, the hard-won know-how 
               to quick-construct a raft

when stranded or stormed into
a story whose symbols mean nothing
to me—yet, the swell is such I wonder 

if the Way is found by way
of sea-gone pleasure?

---

The final two sentences from Malcolm Guite’s foreword to my book, Under the Terebinth ~

The kind of faith that is on offer in this collection is not a series of proclamations but rather a wrestle with the angel, a wrestle that is sometimes a dance. And that of course is what poetry does best: Wrestling and Dancing.

I admit I cried when I read the foreword for the first time.

And here’s that other poem, from Under the Terebinth, titled “Finally a Poem about Boats and Storms and Jesus” ~

I’ve tried to write it

before, but I get sucked out

and flipped around with every tide—

the rip current of the Apostles’

Creed wrests me way off

shore where any vessel I know

to clamber onto is full

of men with little faith—



I end up in the bow

without fail, frantic

for a pillow, believe that if

someone could just fall asleep (not me)

—find that much rest inside himself—

we might, I don’t know, catch 153

fish, or walk on water, maybe see

a ghost. I tend to beg



to be thrown overboard

but no one’s drawing straws;

they’re not afraid. And I am

not their prophet. So I roam

the open sea on every page.

---

Here we are when the book came out~

Further up & further in,

Anna