Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Tree-dom





Tree-dom 

 

Kindergarten chimes - One, Two, Three

Climb under our desks away from the windows

away from the tall windows where the oak tree branches did sway

majestic guardian, leafed or bare, strong limbed through each day 

Turn your face from the windows teacher shrilly would say – 

Yet, each time I curled in that

silent space – I lifted head over shoulder

and did turn my face - smiled at my tree smiling back at me.

For, it was all quite ridiculous you see – 

to a five-year-old thinker such as was me -

Metal dog tag pressed under clothes against my chest

I spent a good time with grownup slants of process  

Hiding under a desk as a protection from a conflagration 

that made teachers level voices scatter pitchy and high 

But, good child that I was, I disobediently peeked, checked on my 

tree and stayed silent and curled without even a hint of an exasperated sigh. 

Until after a moment or two,  we were released to climb out from under 

 – once again safe, none here torn asunder

and there outside just as always was and would be

Stood the solid, secure open-arms of my wise and awaiting powerful tree

Winking at the foolishness of adults and their blatant pathetic ill-hidden anxiety .  

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Twelve Steps Through Paralytic Existential Depressive Dread




Twelve Steps Through Paralytic Existential Depressive  Dread 


1.         Count up the years spent and the years left to go

                  Reflect on what you have done and what you do not yet know

2.        Feel that little scratchy bump on your back and 

    Wonder if in that innocent persistence lay your final act

3.        Wake from that dream when they’re lowering you and

     Ponder -peace in soft cool earth as your soul flew

4.         Watch the children thin faced and wide eyed silent or screaming 

    Shudder at screens and papers and your impotence beaming

5.        Recall history- bodies swinging from those trees – crematorium – litany 

    Shiver at the same implacable hatred appearing on ceaselessly

6.         Fall back into the arms of your family, the sweet embrace forever lovingly 

            Remember reading poems to still bodies from podiums in chapels with people fuzzy

7.         Sit in stillness and listen to your blood thrum in your ears as on play lows and great highs

    Massage icy fingers on your trembling thighs 

8.        Breathe in to a count and out again in jagged uncertain puff puff after puff 

    Until it is all for heaven's sake enough, enough and enough!  

   Review counting the years spent and the years left to go - 

    Reflect on what you have done and what you do not yet know


9.  See the falling, screaming bodies, of innocents and evil-doers, guns, scythes, knives, lies, pollution, disinterest, genocide, war, failure to protect, rotting limbs of trees and testimony, rising seas and seizures of plague, creatures innocent curling in natural habitats as corporate jaws approach, see the birds fly in a murmuration of  color, watch the snow still sparkle on the highest crest, see the falling, the rising, the killing, the birthing of all creatures in all places on and on and on in brilliant racing images falling one into another piling on another and another and still not quite done -

Know that it shall all end for you and for each and every one 


10. Feel the creepy descent of gray heaviness fall as a curtain on a final act three

11. Worry that that flicker light in the corner of your eye is the final flutter for thee

12. Sit in stillness …lips dry…heart pounding…mind racing through it all .. and just when you feel you cannot take another instant  - just when, just when, just when....

 

                             THEN.....


                            Intone  “Not Now!" 

Say it clearly and firm - step from the chaos, the dark and the gray 

into the hope of the light of life in movement on this a newly dawned day 

 

 

                                   

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

It’s not just a cup of tea


 

It’s not just a cup of tea 

steaming swirling in a smooth cup clutched in my hand 

         It’s an elixir of hope  

It’s not just the sprinkled stevia swirling sweetly on my lips   

         It’s the promise of succor

         It's not just a cup of tea

         It's the sip  

         of luminescent life

        slipping down

        my parched throat

        swelling my soul

        in the shimmering sea of now 

         It’s not just a cup of tea 

        It is not just a cup of tea

         As I sip the last and set it 

        down with a clink – 

        my hand opens – 

        my fingers unclench

       the tremulous trembling stills

        breath steadies, eyes clear, 

        heart beats quiet calm ..  

         It is certainly not just a cup of tea

        My mystic magic ministration 

        There for the steep and the sipping whenever

         the fragility of all that it is chillingly seeps ....

     

 


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Color ?





Color? 


why is the sky blue?  asks the child

is the sky blue? asks the philosopher

why is the earth brown? asks the child

is the earth brown? queries the scientist

in all manner of shades shimmering on

the wings of birds in flight, dipping into

seas and lakes, streams rippling over

rock, toads sitting on lily pads, insects

buzzing on fields of flowers, 

mountain tops and graveyards, 

infant skin and elders’ hair, 

conflagrations and quiet meadows, 

savannahs, and crayons 

throughout the chaos of this life

pulsing with blood, bone and 

imagination … throughout it all

color runs, flies, crawls, seeps,

bursts, or ...  does it? 

is all a mere inking over the 

raw lines of existence - yet...

should the spectral spectrum of 

brilliance shared be so – 

does it finally fade to black as

do we? ...

Is all tint, but a human construction 

for this otherwise bland world?


What is real? What is color? 

Is death the absence of hue ... 

Or...?


Perhaps there shall come a 

conclusive, cosmic, collaboration 

of color, a klieg lit nova of luminescent 

illumination, formerly elusive,

entirely incomprehensible 

mimicked by mere mortal imagination -  

only unlocked with the loosening

of physical coil      

beyond 

any rainbow

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Safe




Safe 

 

in the arms of a parent

curled on one’s side

tears wiped with a 

cool cloth as stutter

sobs recede ..

breath slowing

breeze gently blowing 

the light cover soft 

cocooning 

in the arms of a parent

 

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Water under the bridge



Water under the bridge 


True as you say 

there is a great deal 

of water rushing under 

our bridge

Yet, seems to me

that as long as we

are standing on the

bridge looking at

the water – 

as long as we

take care 

neither to fall nor dive in – 

I believe 

I believe 

I still continue to believe - that

we can cross to the other side 

Together. 

The water flowing 

Sparkling … forward 

After all.  

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Everlasting




Everlasting 

 

She was twenty he twenty-two new wedding bands on fingers

to the islands they flew 

Landed and she entranced pulled into irresistible dance after a day or 

two in her soul a certainty knew … she called home:

 


Bride to her father 

 

Hi Daddy, yes all is well – I need to talk to you

Things are not just okay – they are fantastic  

As soon as I stepped off plane it felt like I was home 

we’re going to stay 

 

A second or two ticked by frangipani air 

sweet and heavy drifted in from the open veranda

there she sat on the edge of the bed - a stream of hotel 

AC lifted her just from the beach- showered hair – 

she took a sip of her frozen drink – waiting for him to think  -

his answer came swift and fast – 

its portent intended and would everlast

 

“Baby, said he, is there a cemetery in town?”

 

Yes right in the center down 

 

“When you hang up go there and take a walk around inhale deep and see

it comes awfully fast - follow your dream and be .. 

I love you”

 

Her heart swelled –breath caught, tears fell

To be understood and loved so true, so deep and well

By a father who could let her go 

Though the decision had to be a shock you know. 



Groom to his mother 

 

Mom, Hi …

 

Uh , fine, yep having a good time

Uh, Ma we figured maybe – Uh we’re going to stay

 

The receiver drops

“No No No … No way! 

Hang the sheets on the mirrors my son is dead to me “ *

 

Her newly  minted father-in-law picked up the conversation -

 

“Your mother is upset she thought you were just on vacation

Take care of yourself you hear

Goodbye call and ask for yourself it’s long distance the cost is dear” **

 

She could hear the wailing as he hung up the phone

Lit a cigarette, poured a drink, picked up a towel and walked out alone 

 

She understood the love thrumming in both those calls 

the winds of support the wails of pain 

It all washes over her, warm and refreshed time and time again  

 

Parenthood -Love – Life - all right there…. 

Spilling, sparkling, in Caribbean air 

 

 

 

*A Jewish tradition of mourning included covering mirrors with sheets

**  In the days long prior to cell-phones when long distances rates exorbitant for many – some devised a method of letting a caring party know of an arrival by calling ‘collect’ and asking for oneself. 

Thursday, December 7, 2023

I think it is all in that tree







I think…

I think back 

sun dappling through wafting

willow weeping -  boughs over us,

Father and daughter

I shall never see …

the grass cool beneath

our backs –      breath

easy and safe-

A poem

Written in the air

Lovely as a tree

Held in my forest

of forever memory

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair -





 


Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair

Left the battle-ground tearing the nation and traveled to an island far from the hatred

sputum streets thronging there - 


Left my armbands, kept my flowers – found a place where there was pure treasure in simply living the hours –

Possessions were few and completely unnecessary when crystal waters flowed and there was gentle harmony -

Where I could in gentle frangipani breezes listen aware 

nod Bon voyage to other materialistic far off voices running the treadmill to nowhere –

 

I yearned for the peace, for the universal kindness connection and believed with allmy heart it would come to pass – that I could step out and into a worldly nirvana and without guilt let the years pass –

 

I inhaled sheer beauty each day, taught bright eyed little children their letters and numbers, bore a child of my own, sailed on boats, talked of the world through the night 

with those back from ‘Nam and those who had refused an unjust fight.

 

Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair

believed, in a new world order seeded, ready to blossom with care

 

It never occurred to me that once this movement danced and sang in ardent passion as one glorious teeming mass. 

All hues and beliefs marched, loved and lived in ardent certainty that we had breeched the stultifying morass .   

The beat went on and on and on nothing, absolutely nothing seemed out of scope. 

We brought wars abroad and home to a halt, everything seemed possible with this power of hope - 

and as all transpired and we rose above fallen and slain – 

burgeoned by new optimism, believed in all that the entire planet would gain.  

All the while of this time we listened, and respected the clarion call of Mother Earth – 

it never, ever, for an instant occurred to me that any of this could spin in reverse.

 

Now –

Many decades have flown and I am beyond all conceits - fully grown -the proverbial flowers have faded, dried and in the wind blown  – 

there is nothing as sad, depressing and desperate as aging in place – 

when there seems little hope sparkling on the horizon for this too often inhuman race – 

Too many overfed, privileged, greedy, and such, others struggling starving, the continuum vast and wide, 

Horrors spreading as a bloody overall haze, but worse, even worse than all horrors is this  heinous malaise

 

The malaise that accompanies the grim reaper calmly irrevocably counting out our days with a smile that is cold.   

We are old. We are old. 


Revolutions need the power of belief – need stable institutions against which to rail – 

we stand on unsteady limbs in the tarnish of age that is no longer gold 

too much that glittered steady in a state of declining or absolute fail–  


No, this age no longer gold we sputter and cannot find the words to inspire ourselves or the young -with the tales once told – of a time when belief in each other was strong – 

in the power of the people and the future in each song.

 

And yet, and yet through this fog of grim, dim, hopeless carnage and ache –

there are those crumbs of joy that still remain one day when the soul screams in hunger for pleasure to take.

 

And yet, and yet, moving out, and above, soaring from perspective on high, this may very well be a time when the poison of hatred toxic and putrid runs through the lands and eventually runs dry.  

Perhaps, if we rise, far beyond our elusive, impossible, dreams of individual change, we will see that the seas rising, the bergs melting, the temperatures, quakes, tsunamis, all sorts of catastrophic things are simply the water pounding the rock

 

 

The rock that is stuck in our throats and our hearts, the rock 

that seems to be an individual and global immovable block-  

but perhaps it is true – in a beat of the sand and sea 

that this revolution is a question of evolution whirling about us, confusing, us, into thinking that rapid change we shall see come to be. 

 

In the beat of the sand and the sea and all that shines through darkness – we are but a speck of stardust - but stardust collected illumes the darkness shooting light through - 

whether we shall see the ultimate cosmic revolution is beyond all we can possibly know. 

All we can grasp with both arms, a full heart and soul is that ..

We are the wave

We are the flow

and as Belafonte sang long ago 

... soon the rock must go -


Harry Belafonte - Paradise in Gazankulu