By Rachel Barenblat
Some days I can enter
the holy of holies
by snapping my fingers:
the door swings open.
Other days I ransack
every pocket to find the key
and when I get inside
the room is darkened.
There's mud on the floor,
the intricate altar
is grimy, askew,
its heartbeat silenced.
I sweep the ashes away
open my thermos of tea
re-hang the tapestries,
great branches arching.
At last I light the lamp:
the glint, the glow
regenerating, the homefire
eternally burning.
Learn to trust again
that this oil is enough
to open my eyes
to God, already here.
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I have nothing exciting to report about my Wednesday, but on Thursday most of my holiday cards and packages will be mailed, and that's accomplishment enough for me. I had several conversations with my cats plus one with a bunny in a neighbor's yard, I got a Josephine Wall 2015 calendar for Chanukah, I got The Fellowship of the Ring for free from Google Play plus some Trans-Siberian Orchestra -- that's all good.
In the evening we were busy trying to figure out whether we could fix rather than replace the vacuum cleaner (verdict: failure) and how to load labels into the new printer (verdict: success), though we managed to watch Les Miserables: The History of the World's Greatest Story. Here are some holiday trees from Winterthur's Yuletide, including a Downton Abbey tree and one in Winterthur servants' quarters:
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