Parable

To what might this slow puzzle be
compared? The rabbi is perplexed.
That said, please bear in mind the rabbi
has a taste for fraught perplexities.
Comparisons have long obtained
for those enamored of the word
a measure of requital, have
tendered—just here, for instance—a
momentary take, a likely
likening, not to be unduly
honored as anything, well,
conclusive, but categorically
toward. Still, I love these textures
on the tongue, and love the way
their taste and feel so often serve
to spin the body and the mind
into one vertiginous
assemblage. And so, one asks, to what
slight figure might The Vast and
Inexplicable compare? A mist
that penetrates the bone? The looming
sea? The all but endless and
unyielding green expanse above?
Or, say, the laden word whose compass
and whose burdens turn a multitude
of keen articulations, all
of which do not quite satisfy.

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