While there is still time: And may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you

And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day

by Michael Blumenthal

Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes

itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited

or dreamed. Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a

mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us

heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our

spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,

come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing

I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man

as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets

and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know

is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape

of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed

so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable

axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not

prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto

but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the

shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.

No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,

waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,

and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you

prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,

and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,

and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,

and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.

While there is still time