Earth Etude for Elul 24 - delights in breaking your own behavior and heading towards love

by Molly Bajgot

delights in breaking your own behavior

and heading towards love:

when water logged branch 

comes girdling down the stream

and gets caught by poised stick, gracefully,

i hang

caught

on its varied

fluttering,

communicating

with its dancer.

i watch from a brightly blazed, hot sun rock

naked, this intimate exchange

and then, off it goes —

drifting away, pushed by some force lightly more powerful

than all the other tide pulses, loosening it free —

it glides on until, aha — caught again —

g l i d i n g , 

s 

     t 

        o 

           p

               p

                  i

                    n

                       g

mowing forward,

pausing. 

relying on the 

current the

stream the 

effortlessness and

stubbornness of their

being —

you be - ing

of light and steam . . . 

i’m watching, learning —

the branch does not return up stream.

it’s gentle flow mentions, murmurs:

keep

on

going

forward, i dream, 

keep fluttering, and ruffling, 

bumping against other branches and leaves,

mooring on shore here, shore there

and then back again, rolling,

back to yourself, back

to

the

sea

.

.

.

learn from the journey; 

the branch does not return 

upstream.

Molly Bajgot is a Jewish singer-songwriter and community organizer from Sudbury, Massachusetts. She currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is a lover of music, healing arts, and the outdoors. When she gets the chance to do these things together, she feels at home. She loves to craft ritual, and to be in community both as a member and as an organizer.