Day Six brought balance and beauty to the physical world.
Rabbi Jill Hammer, Tel Shemesh

Five evenings in March,
a lady owl cooed
to the gentleman chosen
to father her owlets.

We marveled
at the metered rhythm,
the metronome cadence,
of call and response.

We waited
for yellow-eyed winks
from the moribund cypress,
for wingbeats at sundown, the screech
of airborne mice on their way to the nestlings.

By the sixth night there was no more
love-talk. The sound of wild presence
stopped. Briefly we pondered why,
why-not, but the after-hours pharmacy
opened, the medical mall expanded
parking, the cardiologists held
a ribbon cutting.

We forgot the star-crossed lovers,
no longer spoke
of the thwarted couple,
discussed our own dilemmas,
how to outwit traffic,
the sleepless bling of neon signage,
the side effects of medication,
meant to right the heart’s dysrhythmia.