I look for mountains.

I miss them here in a flat state.

Not that I grew up around big ones, 

but there were a few in New Jersey with views of New York City, 

touted with exclamation each time we saw them, 

as if they were brand new.

I don’t live around them now,

but keep looking.

 

I headed toward mountains, 

to a place of my past and present, 

knowing what it looked like I thought.

Then my glasses broke, and things changed.

The new ones, 

picked up on a rainy CVS dash along the way,

allowed me to see, but differently.

California mountains, real live bumps made of stone and mud,

big enough to see without lenses,

stood boldly, 

but that wasn’t surprising. 

 

Before my glasses broke, 

I forgot my tallis, 

leaving Grandpa’s wrinkled ancient silk in my top drawer, 

along with the embrace of his story 

that magically sits on my shoulders 

each time I wrap myself in the fabric 

of his East Side, Yiddish-speaking early years.

Busy packing the ordinary for a retreat surrounded by mountains, 

I left home the words it carried, 

the virtual yet oh so tangible “avec amour,” 

signoff of each letter and card, 

and now longed for its anchor.

Grandpa understood words and chose them precisely.

He kept silent during The Times or the Yanks, 

and chose when to write and speak, 

words flowing gracefully, 

bringing heights of history across seder table or checkerboard, 

never unbalanced in my years, 

though he assured me shakier times came before.

 

Unsettled,

I found unexpected balance

in my new orange rain jacket 

which brought more protection than its REI label promised.

I walked in the valley below California mountains, 

dry through four days of rain,

a blissful bursting beacon 

wearing color like a hug from Dad, 

who once painted a car orange

and carried traffic cones in the trunk of his car.

Of all the brilliantly shimmering speeches, 

his mantra “Bright colors!” the loudest,

a clarion protective call.

 

And then Bialik took my breath away

with mountains painted by words 

in small Hebrew and English letters, 

fuzzy with those interim lenses. 

Through those imperfect glasses 

I looked at the page differently and not so long, 

straining to focus and take in 

“words like the high mountains of God,” 

words like “a great abyss.”[1]

This was a surprise.

 

Bialik’s mountains illumine mystics and poets, 

choices to give voice, or hold silence, 

if we can even choose.

On his elevations,

letters audition with scent and taste, 

words explode with poetry, others empty to a husk.

His mountains are holy or ordinary, 

brilliantly shimmering and balancing on floes,[2]

to be considered and be inspiring.

 

 

So when we didn’t climb a mountain the last rainy day,

and my disappointment fell as the dawn rose,

I saw the place differently. 

Words, not to be climbed like the California peaks, 

emerged through lifting rainy fog 

as I paused to sway on a children’s swing set

and stare at an ancient tree my kids would love to climb. 

Standing at the center of a small bridge over storm-rushing water,

I breathed in 

like my old friend Steve taught on an Alaskan night hike long ago.

I forget his science but still inhale the clear air, 

adding morning gratitude prayer for my soul 

and body’s open openings, closed closings, 

belayed by the ancients’ words. 

 

Had Mom escorted me to this point,

I wondered.

She’d walked with me earlier days in that valley,

along a mindful path of aloneness meant to address the Divine.

Aware of the Sabbath and melody 

this path gave a young her, 

it was to her I spoke instead, with tears:

“I understand why you insisted I come here as a young me.

This place lifts me, then and now.”

 

Amidst days of broken glasses, 

orange rain jackets and missing prayer shawls, 

surrounded by peaks of rocks and words, 

I descended into crevasses within, too, 

and ascended to pause restlessness of these days 

alongside polite acknowledgments set down next to the fork.

In silence, I recalibrated my soul 

nudged by time-traveling Bialik 

whose eloquent imagery of exploding and bereft words 

urged speech and silence well chosen,

partnered by a sage singer of my own soundtrack, 

“…In the quietness of now let us ponder…

what is hidden and what’s whole 

and finally learn to travel at the speed of our own souls.”[3]

And, for a little while, I saw peaks differently, clearly.

 

(January, 2024, IJS CLP Hevraya Retreat, Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Simi Valley, California)

[1] Revealment and Concealment in Language, Hayim Nahman Bialik, 1915. [2] Ibid, paraphrased from Bialik. [3]Carrie Newcomer, Abide.