My grandson said, Bhaju, you’re definitely an old hippie.
I said, Yeah, but what do you mean?
Rainbow everything, he said. Peace love and joy.
I wound my redorangeyellowgreenblueviolet silk shawl around my shoulders.
Peace love and joy was my mother’s answering machine greeting
except that she spoke the words with the emotional weight
of disease, despair, diarrhea.
My mother could roll into a room and slurp up
the Life Force like marrow from a chicken bone,
grease polishing her chin and oiling her fingers.
This joy-sucking did not make her happy.
The day we put Mom in hospice, her doctor leaned close,
confessed that instead of reading medical journals
she studies Torah. Your mother is a deeply spiritual being,
the doctor said, but she is so broken she can’t hold anything
in this world. Never underestimate
the work she is doing for you
and for your children and your grandchildren
in the World to Come.
After the flood, the rainbow was hung
in the Heavens by a contrite Creator;
keshet: to bend, to circle back, to return.
My mother was a priestess, albeit a broken one.
I learned at the bottle-breast to turn
towards the Juju, the Mojo, the beauty, the brilliance,
but instead of siphoning off my neighbor’s vitality
I witness, I honor, I mirror,
create the world out of shattered glass
and bless the empty spaces with grout.
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