JAKE MARMER

The Rings

this morning i counted
the number of places i called home
bending my fingers
in English this time: four
fists and one
                at forty-four—
thrice across the ocean
twice across the continent
five times as a little kid
three countries but one 
changed its borders under my feet
eight moves more
or less across the street
in the same neighbourhood
that i have not returned to in eleven years
immigration—
it keeps happening
like rippling water
that preceded me—
                a convenient mythological suitcase
                        of a thought
but there's no myth here: just a life below
some surface I'm trying to break
family  work  air  want—
I sit outside, three thousand
miles away from my new digs
the twenty-first
I can't bring myself to call it home
and boxes will stay boxed
while i sit breathing among giant centuries-old redwoods
you'd have to kill
them to count the rings and know for sure
but they don't count
                like I'm counting
and i sit and watch them and there is enough
to see even without movement without
birds or wind entering stage left
i feel it in my lower back 
in the back of m throat
I’ve tried prayer tried silence 
I've been counting all morning
there is no dignity in constant movement
the way there isn't dignity in losing your mind
or your wallet or growing a big hole
in the middle of your bole
i sit thinking, waiting
to understand something
something about the rings 
that doesn’t want to be understood
my eyes rove upwards and down 
magnificent trunks scanning for hollows

The Day Before

my parents and my children
don’t speak the same language
or live on the same continent
but the day before rosh hashana
staring at blurry, half-imagined 
projections on the screen
they kept shouting towards each other
in the language neither understands
shana tova
bounds back and forth like an involuntary chant

music is air and drool 
in the desperate crooked horn of prayer