The latter two weeks of Av tend to take me by surprise—after the calamitous Three Weeks, a reawakening to tenderness.  For me, this turn is deepened by recent memory.  Two years ago, the Three Weeks overlapped with end-of-life care for my father, who died on Tu B’Av.  In both communal and personal observance, the sense that there is nothing more to be done allows, and requires, a heightened sense of all that must be done, both in formal observance and via a more diffuse service of the heart. 

I wrote “Interception” after a turn of another kind, in the days following the initial missile barrages of June 12-14.  After nights of running to the miklat and the bone-shaking booms of interceptions and impacts, the sheer ordinariness of morning sunlight and a creakily reawakening body felt like a kind of gift, not unlike the gift of weeks that conclude Av.  All of this despite—or maybe precisely because of—the provisionality of relief.

What would it be like if the bombardments were unrelenting, if there were no morning sunlight, if there were no place to run?  It is unimaginable, yet the heart, reawakened to tenderness, still strains to hear.

Interception

Ben Corvo

To rehearse the end of the world, and then wake up
the next morning.  Birdsong, a querulous crow or two,
the usual bad taste in your mouth.  The struggle

to find footing is nothing more than usual,
the ground is solid enough, your body is
reliable enough, and nothing at all is new

except, maybe, this wash of tenderness,
taking you by surprise, bringing tears to your eyes—
Such a narrow quotient of joy!  The placement

of your bones, a little sunlight streaming through the blinds,
small routines, clumsy preparations, morning prayers—
even the nameless yearning pulling you from your life,

a distant rumbling, a siren from another
district that your heart, even now, strains to hear—