Though she'd have understood barely a third of it:
You should see my Jackie's golden poem.
To my bubbe,
I'd
have written
michtam
Upon
michtam.
Who decides when it's a
michtam?
Maybe the person who wrote down the psalms
Was actually Obed, David's grandfather
(His grandmother wouldn't have learned to write
And, anyway, we're never told her name)-
So dazzled by the
apple
if
his eye
Who sang his
alif-bet
at eighteen months,
The Song of the Sea, by heart, at three:
Conductor, hear my David's golden poem .
Was David thinking of him when he wrote
May you look upon your children's children?
You made it, bubbe, even if your boys
Were not quite
olive plants around your table,
Though one was a hell of a basketball player,
And my father, the
goldene neshumeh,
Would walk around the house reci ting Shakespeare,
Though now he claims to need help with my poems-
He'd understand if I could write a
michtam,
But I can't do better than a
michtav,
Of which I've wri tten more than a fair number.
Maybe, since a
michtav
is a letter,
A
michtam's
an epistolary psalm.
It's not a bad idea, a letter to God:
You could collect your thoughts that way
Or, better yet, decide not to send it
As I decide with nearly all my letters,
Or sloppiness dictates, since I lose them all,
Or am incapable of having stamp,
Letter, envelope, correct address
All in the same place at the same time,
None of which is necessary for a poem.
But what is required of a
michtam?
A living grandmother? a ten-string harp?
What's missing from the last three thousand years?
AJesuit priest, in the Anchor edition,
Which I smuggled from the synagogue library,
