Michael Grinthal: The Space Between You and Me

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Shabbat

The warm animal
Of sundown comes each stitch

In the binding
Light of the ductile
Rain to begin

To fail again
How sweet
We hurt

The earth into bread
How sweet         
The space

Between you and me is
A silver ankled
Tree. Does it taste

Good, may I please
Each part of it
We asked

To be stone
And we were given
To live softly among

Stone and we asked
To flower and we were given
Bowels

So that every one make
Their own shadow
For a prayer

Is an animal
Whose molecules are
Mineral

Splintered in smoke
And as tough as a tremble
As lost as an hour we swerved

Whirled
Sistered and wove, did not
Grow wise

Invented no style
There was mud
Inside us so we sung

Our breath as horrible
As robins returning. Morning’s
Bowels

Brighten up into
The power lines, hung
With wintry mix, with rain’s lost

Milk teeth, accidentally
Joy. Touch nothing
It says. I go

Out of the day
Its drowning
Rise, its weight

Decreased by one
Specific anger
Of praise

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Michael Grinthal’s poems have appeared in Jubilat, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, Realpoetik, and other publications.  He has worked for 20 years as a community organizer and lawyer in the racial justice and tenants’ rights movements.