Counting (the Omer)

It’s time for the Omer count 

That we may begin to wonder, 

What is the point

Of counting?

Why are we doing this?

We make note of the number

In relation to the numbers preceding, 

Aware of the numbers to come

And to what end?

There is no end!

Counting, once begun

Goes on forever, infinity,

Like God,

So why stop at 49?

Some ancient harvest festival,

But what’s that to us?

Maybe it’s more of a mindfulness thing 

Like Shabbat,

When we stop time

And declare it holy.

But this Omer business

Lasts for seven weeks and

Perhaps,

When we're in the middle of it,

We’re feeling very Samuel Beckett:

“I can’t go on, 

I’ll go on.”

And then there’s the counting of the days 

And days and days,

The numbers themselves have no meaning: 

It’s the counting.

And like chanting,

Counting doesn’t work as meditation 

Until after you’ve achieved boredom.

Anyway,

It’s not what you’re counting that matters, 

It’s the counting itself.

It is its own justification,

And every number becomes a prayer,

A chat with God.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth day,

We give thanks that we can fulfill this obligation,

Fourteenth, fifteenth day,

A holy sequence,

Eighteenth, Nineteenth day,

Yeah, yeah, whatever,

Twenty-third, twenty-fourth day...

Have we achieved boredom yet?

And on the twenty-eighth day of the Omer 

With three more weeks to go,

We sigh,

We can’t go on!

We go on. 

Amen.