Rounded at the top,
a crown of perfection —
gleaming yellow-gold,
polished by the trembling of my hands.
Here I see the dream I was meant to bear:
my ideals,
my people’s yearning made flesh in fruit,
smooth with impossible completion.
Then, the narrowing —
the gartel cinched around its waist,
a belt of humility,
separating breath from breath,
the sacred air above
from the profane murmur below.
It is the line I draw each morning
between prayer and practice,
between the soul’s reach
and the hunger of the body.
Beneath, the lower half —
rough, pocked, scarred with human failure.
Here is the residue of my unlearned holiness,
the instincts that root me
in the soil of longing.
Here I am most myself,
half-formed, half-fallen,
still bound to the upper light
by that thin, indented gartel
which whispers,
even separation is a kind of connection.
My esrog is me
And I am it
And it is in my dreams