Transmigration
 
Tanna of Meron, Yohai—merkabah sage if not bozina
with son Eleazar and companions, your eyes stir in the blight
of a pilgrimage site. Akiba feared the moral nebulae and died
believing General Bar-Kokhba was messiah. Not you. You
heard Elohim for twelve years in a cave near a carob tree,
with sink-holes, dormice and martens, only to return
to Reconquista Spain a millennia later, your notched tunic
sewn saffron yellow and alizarin red, worn there
by Moses de Leon who wrote with your hand.  
Scrolls are radii, orbital, the calliphoric gloss of Yahwic
proem by which you conjured each other through Holy
Names: Adonai Echad turns blood to ink, and ink, in turn
scripts black fire on white fire with a parasang of mishkans,
that day, Shimon, when you laid buried in the sand
dreaming of Castile and the odor of olives on Holy Writ.
You dreamt back as Moses dreamt ahead on a chariot
drawn by Metatron over stalks of atah, exchanging
faces between cheek and jowl to write this book.