Where God Is Found

Dov Frank

I searched for a god to fit my needs.
As a child, He floated down the hall
to my bedroom atop the trop-melody
of my father practicing the leining
in the dining room, and I’d fall asleep
humming along to Joseph reuniting with his brothers,
to that melody of reconciliation.
God used to be moist
in my father’s hot breath on my neck during birkhat kohanim
when we lived in that wool tent: God, my father, and I.
Hidden under the wool, my father would cup his hands,
his private revelation to me,
and I’d watch as invisible hues would
collect in his hands.
My neck would emerge stained with breath and divine colors
But my cold neck emerges dry today.
My father prays, and I’ve heard God prays,
But I don’t remember how.

I’ve searched for a god to fit my needs
and the gods I found have been slow to anger, but rush to please.
The God I knew didn’t give in so easily.
Sometimes I try to know the world
And live amongst its people; I go to bars
And listen to the trop of the bar dwellers
when they sing their old blues standards and
the oracles of Paul McCartney.
There’s a moistness, something raw and exposed—
Within them, I hear a melody of reconciliation.
So perhaps in knowing the world
I am learning to know my old God in a new way
as though I have stumbled into God’s room
While He is in a state of undress,
and hasn’t yet put on His makeup.