I want a taste.
Right now, I don’t want the whole thing.
I want a palette whet, but not fully satisfied
Something still to yearn for
Sometimes, what I hunger for
is hunger
Shabbat is a taste
It’s not the whole thing
It leaves a palette whet
but unsatisfied
Something still to yearn for
But, what we’re yearning for, is to no longer yearn, here
Shabbat is a taste of the world to come
Where there will be no hunger
Where there will be nothing to strive for
where rest will be both the rule and the exception
Where we will be free
- from worry, from strife
Free.
In every way, free.
When we see that day, it will take our breath away.
But for now, I hunger for Shabbat
I’m happy with the taste
I hunger for the taste
I hunger for the hunger that it leaves
for entering each shabbat pining for perfection
and entering back each week again refueled and antsy to try once more
Just like:
Not all my loves have been perfect but they’ve each given me some taste of that Love with a capital L
Just like:
Every sunset has taken my breath away
but left me with just enough to keep breathing, believing
that next time will be even more incomprehensibly golden
Just like:
Every book i’ve ever read
Hasn’t kept me transported to another world with every single word, but
They’ve shown me how language can become interstellar, how typeset can teleport
Left me with echoes of it all after the last page is turned
Before this shabbat
Earlier today
I was sitting by the ocean in San Francisco
The birds were flocking by the hundreds
Ships as big as islands swam across the horizon
And while calling my brother in New York to tell him about all this glory
I spilled my bottle of water on my dress
It’s a really cute dress
And it’s also very practical
Cuz it’s made of some water-resistant nylon-y thread that kept all that water from soaking in, and instead, it made it form all these little droplets on the surface of the skirt
And in the beach-side sun of late afternoon pacific
these dozens of droplets began twinkling like diamonds
Their surface tension held rainbow reflections
Can you see it?
Little tastes of rainbows
A skirt dotted with a spilled handful of diamonds, of tastes
Not the same as the rainbows in the sky, or the diamonds in the mine
But they were mine
Enough to leave my palette whet, but unsatisfied
Hungry for more of the abundant beauty this world churns out like butter
I hunger for a shabbat of good hunger
Of showing us what it is we are yearning for
I pray for the world to come
But I dance in our little day that serves as its reflection
That sits on our week like a rainbow-diamond-water-droplet on a nylon skirt
Pressing smiles into our cheeks
overwhelmingly beautiful
and yet,
just enough, to keep us hungry for more