No Regular Work

No Regular Work

(“You shall do no regular work, and you shall offer a food offering made by fire to the Lord” Leviticus 23:25)

My mind has done all the heavy lifting,
and now will not stay silent, filling my earth and sky
with visions of places decades of spaces away.
I may rest, I may recline,
I may spend my time adding movies to my queue,
but my mind races ahead. I cannot spend any time
alone without it rehearsing something I
wish I had not said.

I would take a sabbath now, but I tow every mistake with me
to the lake, to the river, to the isolated pew
in the tiny chapel where the dew is still on the roses.

I suppose it does not matter, this muscling of my thoughts,
except they scatter the melodies that angels sing here and
only now (not then) and I begin again with days so long they
move backwards toward the dawn.

Yes, my brain is more energetic than my brawn, but it also
is befogged and hears the basso horn sounding the alarm
(but I cannot fathom the depth of the beach that surrounds the island)
sounding the alarm
as my chest vibrates with its imperceptible voice. I forget
why I came here and where my body belongs.

It remembers songs I used to sing, stages I boarded,
music I played outside on the square or inside in the
ballroom repeating a second set of jazz after people
finally began to dance.

My brain fills my days like a dirty martini,
unclear and wet; the dreams unmet leak from me
in brackish streams.

So, no, I will do no regular work today, and,
if I may,
I will offer (like a cantor) memorized words
and pieces, sentences and phrases, jigsaw pieces
of incompletion. My conceptions have gone
astray.

So, yes, I will write these words today, and,
I still pray,
they will speak to every love and friend who
knew me well enough to keep the
day tremors away.