The Pocket Watch

For Abba

In the twighlight

You find your comfort-

In the grayness of that in-betweeness

That Halacha often finds uncomfortable,

There you have made your life’s labor of love.

Bein Hashmashos

That in-between space, between

Light and dark, heaven and earth, G-d and man,

Where those parts of creation that “just did not fit”

Were finally brought to being (midrashically)-

In that space you labored your life, in love.

So what better gift from those who love

Admire and respect you

Than this gift of precision and antiquity

A man-made apparatus

Invented by human ingenuity

To tell the difference between day and night, dark and light

And the minutiae of daily life as it is lived

But broken into solitary fragments

Hour by hour-Minute by minute-

A pocket watch of antiquity

From an age when men had to slip their hands

Into their waist coat pockets

To retrieve this precious machine

In an act of gravitas

In an act of withdrawing into the moment

Into that in-between space, between

A lived life and an observed life.

What better token of our love

Than this antique piece

Which bears the silver of its years

And the era of its industry

With the dignity of its mission

To plainly and humbly tell time

As you have done, observing so many sunsets over the Hudson

In your research into those ancient scholars

And their pursuit of a defining moment

When the sun finally wanes

And succumbs with such dignity.