This was written after an exhausting struggle with myself. The poem is full of allusions obvious to some, but not to others, and is both literal and metaphorical. Today I struggle Like an unwilling ball Tossed between the Longing And the Reality, Dying each time I fly over The great gulf gaping Between the Two; Reality fractured Into sharp-edged shards. Today I sit in dimmed light, Looking at ancient stone walls With the Strains of Hope Peering out at me From black and white photographs From another time. White Strains of Longing Tug at my heart as I listen To words waving like green palm fronds, Flashing glimpses of an Oasis in the Desert, Miragelike, but oh, so poignant, Grey Strains of Reality Claw at my mind; Bob Dylan's pebbly rasp Leaving me standing At the doorpost, Almost arrested in mid-gesture, As a scroll of promise goes Nearly untouched, untasted. There are no accidents. No chance encounters. The fleshing out of a ghost two millennia old is not natural. The gathering of flesh like grains of dust from the four corners of the earth, beckoned by the Four Winds, to clothe bones dry as Sahara sand, must make us clap our hands over our mouths in wonder, and to silence our triteness when we remember with twice three times the collective heaviness of a million stones out of what furnace the Hope has been born. Selah Even now, we hope for The next year in a city of gold, Washed clean of gnarled, twisted memories, And free of a thousand fears. Today, I choose the Longing, For its vision shapes With hand unseen, The destiny of Reality; Before ten thousand scornful eyes I will bind with loving twists The Tefillin to my mind and heart That it may hold and determine my deeds.