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SEPT. 29
Reminiscence Carol Whitlow
This was your childhood home, Molly, Not just these floors and windows, But these people, neighbors, friends The landscape of characters.
We went to visit Lieu. “She doesn’t have much, time,“ I warned . Lieu told her daughter: “Bring those pictures from the bottom drawer And Tiffany brought out a bag of photos As if they had been waiting for this moment.
We carefully studied the prints. To each one we said, that’s Joanne, Is that David, look how young he was, Molly said, “I still have that red dress Angela only wore it once.”
And there’s your mom And there’s your mom And doesn’t Vivi look beautiful in that long dress And You went to my grandfather’s 100th birthday party
And so our daughters, Lieu’s and mine, watched as we travelled back in time And space, around the globe and back, Our lives, intertwined, our children, our parents, Moving in and out of our lives like colors in a sunset, Our homes, our jobs, our joys, We revisited each person and place
It was time to go. “Molly, can you help me get up,” Lieu said, “I’m so weak.” And Molly put her strong arms under Lieu’s small bones, and lifted her The way we once lifted Molly.
Did Molly feel the way life ebbs, as even now she watches her own young grow strong, and can she see her own mother weakening?
O how we need each other to hold each other to put our arms around each other and bear the weight and bear the pain and ease the journey
O how we need to share the memories And stories and people, To tell of love in all those places for all of those people, And to know we are all a part Even as we come and go away again.
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MEANDERING Susan Weitz
This morning’s rain is washing
the colors. The yellows are brown,
the orange is gold.
Yesterday, sensing the impending change,
my GPS took me on a fall foliage drive
past lakes I’d never seen,
through villages whose homes
were dwarfed by superannuated
trees. We were supposed to drive
due north, but why be so inflexible
when beauty is poised, all fluttery brilliance,
before it dives, as we all do,
to merge finally with the soil?
I made it to the airport
with three minutes to spare.
In the Waiting Room Joanna Green
Packed together
Shoulder to shoulder
We are waiting for something
In the anteroom of a dream
Black, brown, some white like me
We mill about as in a bar with no drink
A woman is complaining
In a language I don’t understand
I turn to her with questioning eyes
“I am listening”
“Kwazikakulia” she demands
“Kwa – zi – kulia?” I repeat
“Kwazikakulia!”
So there is my task: I must find
Someone who speaks
The language
Waking up
I know it already:
Kujichagulia
The second principle
Of Kwanzaa –
Self determination
And I understand
We were waiting yes but
We would not wait
Forever
To the Beekeeper FRAN MARKOVER
for my friend George
Practice in the most floriferous field.
Fill your basket: you won't feast alone.
If you waggle your walking stick, you'll find red petunias by the porch.
Hear the thrum of the hive, a hundred Simon Says.
Say ah..., here's Apis Melliphera wearing Eau de Violet.
There's Cosmos, the Obsession.
Step wider, longer, harder until ambrosia nears your lips,
until tremor becomes swagger, pulse, hosanna,
until you hold dirt, grass, birdseed with steadier hands.
If you listen to the swarm, there's no need for hearing aids.
So celebrate the radiant circle, the boy you've once more become.
Pause heavenward for a cup of light.
Dance: your mate's been the most beloved bloom.
Dance, as if you, beekeeper, have one more round with her,
as if she still breathes among the daffodils.
Even though death stuns you, keep gathering
orange petals that feed you and the children.
Go home. Shake those bee wings, arms shivery with grief.
Look, the air is plumed with fragrance.
A Little Poem Rob Scott
cats
washing
machines
A blogger’s note passed on from Rob, instructive for those wondering where poets sometimes get their inspiration: “It took me hours to write this little poem. First I had to do three loads of laundry Then I had to pet my cats so that they would let me use them in my poem.” Cheers. Rob
Untitled X SANTIAGO RODRIGUEZ
Cuando me haga viejo yo quiero volver a la escuela, a estar en un salón, tener un maestro o una maestra y gente con quién discutir los temas que estemos viendo.
No quiero ser un viejo que se encierra a estar solo o que se queda esperando a ver quién le visita.
Al menos eso creo ahora, quién sabe que vaya a querer cuando me haga viejo.
Ojalá tenga la oportunidad de hacerlo.
TWO POEMS BY SUSAN ESCHBACH
Stevenson Rd.
seeking invisible turbulence
capturing updraft
clouds as guidepost for thermals
and one
power flap
raptors soar glide float
circling in vertical layers
inspiring awe
no cawing and rasping
no adding stir to the air
tomorrow I will
glide soar float
above the buffeting winds
and eddying anxieties
of my staff
one power flap
This sea
Silurian stone
smooth silk against
my lip curve of my cheek
down my neck
surfaced as a surprise
imagine
central new york cerulean skies
wide sun
warm shallow sea
this slight beauty
light in my palm
shadow of fossils
ascomycete and trilobite
sea life pressed into sand
443 million years
to here
what even is a million?
who will hold my fossiled self
a toe, eyelash,
curve of my cheek
smooth against them in
443 million years?
TWO POEMS BY MARTIN BIDNEY
28 Holy Joys
Cast off and banished from thy sight;
Thy holy joys, my God, restore,
And guard me, that I fall no more.
--from Isaac Watts’ hymn beginning
“O thou that hear’st when sinners cry”
[note from Google: “Of 600 tunes in (American hymnal) The Sacred Harp 149 have words by (18th century English poet) Isaac Watts.]
The Sacred Harp, at folksong fest,
Created bliss that left me blest.
The spirit of a shaped-note hymn
The grace ’twould praise can aptly limn.
Although the prayer cited here
In Harp-book pages won’t appear,
It sums the feeling well for me
Of all that heartfelt hymnody.
New England’s William Billings taught
What mighty alteration wrought:
The fourth and fifth replace the third
As major garb for sacred word.
These intervals predominate
And aid to make the soul elate:
So in a group who loudly chant
Each member’s made a hierophant.
We cannot live without the might
That love for neighbor brings to light.
Our holy joys from height outpour
When, neighbor-graced, we share our lore.
Glow deep within, you hymnal tone,
That through the years have kindred grown!
In fellowship, by melody,
Let light in heart enkindled be.
Reply to Emily Dickinson Poem 1479
The Devil – had he fidelity
Would be the best friend –
Because he has ability –
But Devils cannot mend –
Perfidy is the virtue
That would but he resign
The Devil – without question
Were thoroughly divine.
We question if it were benign –
What skill new path can dare –
Craftiness – if not quite divine –
Ulysses – Jacob share –
To calculate – and so to count –
Pythagorean play –
If all is number – high to mount
With pebbles’ aid – we may.
It’s funny how forgotten people can suddenly turn up. DAVID REGENSPAN
Some time after my widowed mother’s death I was looking through her basement in preparation for an estate sale, to see if there might be any items worth salvaging before everything went on the auction block. There was a table full of tools rusted with age. Distasteful vases, useless jars, broken pole lamps. There was a bookcase along one wall. The whole thing was painted a now-discolored off-white and, so far as I was concerned, was no more a candidate for my own acquisition then were the other items. The books themselves, however, might be another matter. They were old looking, true, with faded bindings, but there was also the possibility that one or two of them might have some value.
There were various items in Hebrew and Yiddish. These, then, must have been books belonging to my grandparents. Both my Hebrew and my Yiddish were spotty, but I was able to decipher enough to know that some of the volumes were prayer books. One was a chumash, a book designed for following and studying the weekly Torah readings in synagogue—in very poor condition, I might add. One was, of all things, a Yiddish translation of one of the works of the playwright and essayist Oscar Wilde. And one was… what?
It was a small volume covered with dust. I don’t know why I chose to pull it from its shelf. I felt oddly protective toward it. But the book demanded a wiping down. I went upstairs to retrieve a sponge. I returned, gently wiped the book’s spine, and read:
Essays of Elia. Charles Lamb.
I knew the book from my graduate school days. Victorian essays. They were illuminating of the period, but nothing I would find myself reading again.
I wiped down the rest of the book’s cover. I opened it—carefully, because its binding was cracked. There was a signature and a date on the blank page just within the front cover: Herman H. Span 1926.
This, then, was a book owned by my long lost Uncle Herman, a man I never knew. He died young from, of all things, an unpasteurized milkshake that he bought at a farm stand. His death happened decades before I was born. He was known in my family as the writer who never was, the poetic soul who was cut down before his life truly began. And the book was the only physical trace I had ever seen of his life—a book of Victorian prose.
Funny what a little cleaning can reveal. I took the volume home.
History of Breathing Barbara Regenspan
My father was a chessmaster who inhaled audibly, having divined the next move,
then exhaled audibly—a medieval warrior confidently grasped in hairy hand.
I held my breath during silent pondering before those moves--sent to serve my mother’s
tuna sandwiches, down in the basement, to the eight best players in Philadelphia—
exhaling with delivery of melamac plates to the margins between table edge and chess board—
careful not to knock the ash trays, then another breath. The year I married David, we moved
to Jerusalem. After that first shock at the dumpster, I learned to inhale, open the lid, exhale while feral cats escaped, release the bag, close the lid, then breathe again.
Each time I remembered being the little girl in Philadelphia—learning to hold her breath—
craving the divided attention of pipe-smoking men practicing their winning moves.
