In a Market Dimly Lit

The bird that plucked the Olive Leaf

Has been circling like a record 'round the spindle in my mind

Where the needle's worn the grooves too deep,

And scratched the wax that's blistered from the heat besides

So from any movement in the room-

If my cat walked by the arm skipped!

But to my surprise, my interrupting cat improved

A sound already so severely compromised

The needle's worn the grooves too deep

I'm a donkey's jaw on a desert dune

Beside the bush that Moses saw

That burned and yet was not consumed

She's the silver coin I lost,

I'm the sheep who slipped away

We pray the fingers crossed

But you listen patiently anyway

I wrote a little song for you

With a melody I'd borrowed put to words that didn't rhyme

To repeat what you already knew

As the stones thrown at your window tapped a syncopated time

You kept a distance out of fear you'd break

But what good's a single windchime, hanging quiet all alone?

The music our collisions would make

Is a sound that turns the road-that-leads-us-back-home

Into Home.

The music our collisions make!

I had a rusty spade but I'm not the fighting sort

If I was Samson I'd have found that harlot's blade

And cut my own hair short!

Then in a market dimly lit I come casually to pay

You see my coins are counterfeit

But accept them anyway

So spare me your goodbyes,

Your waving-handkerchief-good-byes

Given my tendency to err so on the sentimental side

I'll spare you my goodbyes,

The truth belongs to G-d,

The mistakes were mine