Spooktober 2024: Depths

I didn't know your depths until I saw the shooting star
while driving home from Shabbat Sukkot
with Ecclesiastes playing in my head.
Because it was you who introduced me to Ecclesiates
And to shooting stars.
You told me about the ancient writer
who sought God and found meaninglessness
And you showed me the meaning in our planet
crossing through a pile of space debris.
And I suppose from there, our lives danced,
orbiting one another, sometimes getting hot enough
to break off pieces,
which may have led to never feeling whole.
I always thought I was chasing meaning
while you insisted there was none,
but I suppose I rolled my eyes at all your holiday toasts
and grand speeches.
Maybe our timing was just off.
Where I saw a time of meaning, you saw a time of satire.
Your time of speaking was my time of eating.
But I suppose there is a time for tradition and a time for none.
And sometimes our traditions overlapped.
A montage flashes through my mind:
Reading Tennyson
Debating Shakespeare
Listening to The Byrds in the car
Standing beyond the city lights, waiting
for the perseids to crash to the Earth
in a moment where only two of us exist.
Apparently, there is a time for songs and a time for poetry
A time for grand speeches, and even a time for silence.
There is a time for old prayers, whispered to an unanswering darkness
And new prayers, spoken with halting tongue
I stumbled through the shecheiyanu,
since I haven't seen a shooting star in years.
And now I can't help but wonder,
if I inherited my soul from you,
and neither of us knew it.