V. Dark Wings

MESSAGES

The tide lifts shoreward,
swift and sure below the
moon’s command.

I watch to see if my walls
of sand will hold or fail.
Only the sea knows and it
speaks in tongues not words.
I have been told flux is all
things earthly, perhaps beyond.

In gathered darkness I squat
below the bluffs hearing the
slow drip of rainwater on
ageless stone..

Rain and the passings of a life
mine.
Seconds become minutes
become hours, vanish.
The mystery of it as though
something unknown calling out
to just these moments.

All my life I have reached for
the secret home of time.
How it looms in its invisible
sheath,
How it make no sound.
How it moves among spaces
and objects like a ghost,

Years ago I came here to be
with my beloved.
We built sand towers and moats.

We built a fire to hear the music
of flame in the thickness
of night.

We swam far out to meet the
ocean’s call.
Only one returned to this
poor shadow of shore.

When I dare ask how love
and death arrived here at the
same time I find no answer.
I the memorist with only
words to conjure.
                                 —Doug Bolling

 

PRAYER

Prayer
is the main thing,
with or without words
from the heart.

Monitor bleeps
of life
show in up and down
mountains and valleys

Then one long line begins the infinite trip.
                                                                          —Hayim Abramson
-----------------------------------
In remembrance of Tuvia Abramson, z”l,
our grandson. He was about a year and a half old
when he died several years ago at Chanukah time.


 

DARK WINGS

My mother and father lie next to each other
in white marble beds close to the sunlit sands
of the Mediterranean.

There is grief there always will be
a fresh pool of tears in the ground. Every day
code words in the wind expect to be deciphered

and even though we all turn to dust and ashes,
there surely is an afterlife as I don’t have to remind you
how personal is the message in the bird’s song over a grave.

We don’t have that many words for the wonder
of her dark wings continuously outspread to catch the light,
bringing to life the precious love story of the dead we miss.
                                                                                                           —Gretti Izak


in the end

the calligraphy of strain and illness
vanishes like disappearing ink
your skin is lit from within
as if you anticipate a new story
is it hidden in folds of shrouds?

early on, someone names you
named, the tight husks that bind your DNA are released
you expand, meld with your talent
but confusion strikes
you hide
lost in translation
with no bridge of words
you create and hide
hide and create

now a second naming takes place
you march out of your tired body
bold, you spring forward
out of the shadows
as if there never were secrets

the banal the petty spite and rage fall away
they inter easily among inert stones

in perfect relief
like stars against an incredibly clear night
you appear with no anxiety
you reach up and in one swift motion arrange constel-lations
everything makes sense now

your facets and tiers crown you
like the twelve stones around Jacob’s head

you leave
in the exact instant we get to know you

you get to sleep
safe from wars and tiresome journeys
we almost envy you
                                                                       — Judy Belsky

 

SAFTA

Could we really do that?
The clock was
Racing against us, how
Knowing that she
Was ill and likely wanted
us, How could we not do it?

Do it?
Packing up food, clothes and all that,
Was not what I wanted,
Erev yom Kippur was
For pondering and preparing Yet she
Needed us, and how.

I don’t know how
We managed it
it was she
Who was meant to come here, that
Fever stopping her was
Not what anyone wanted
We took all that was wanted
Stuffing the car to the gills somehow
Travelling to Yerushalayim, how strange it was
Kol nidrey tonight- who could believe it?
Davenning in a strange shul, who could imagine that?
Yet all we could think was “How is she?”

It was she,
Who we all wanted.
She who taught us all that
You always give no matter to whom or why or how
Giving and loving, that is it,
That is who she was.

And now she is a was
And now we can only remember who was that ‘she’
And now we can see it,
That hard but beautiful last day was what she wanted
And now we can see how,
We were drawn by the nose to Yerushalayim to create that

For it was her family’s last caress
She really wanted
Hashem gave her that and hindsight showed us how.

                                                                                              —Batya Jacobs


THE VINEYARD

The corn has turned to thistle, the apples
into mold—and gone the plow,
the seed, the sickle, the ewe to the pail,
press to the grapes; for a man’s grief
for the death of his wife has let
a land once fertile fall to waste,
and on this haggled earth he drops
his tears and waters it in vain.

And yet, how strangely beautiful
this spent soil with its brunt of shadow
and spillages of light. The soul
that earns its sustenance in such
a place, toils in a vineyard built
on bones and finds what will suffice.

                                                                 —Constance Rowell Mastores


 
and the mariner said… best be getting on

Feel it coming to an end;
skin swells; water swells;
but where can old bottles go?
It was heading hard for you;
lichened bark on clear sap; it was
wrapping up for you; autumn
leaves on winter seas; it was
breaking down for you. It’s time

for time to pass,
                             for you,
                                            at last.
                                                        — Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer


THE ROSE GARDEN

The rose garden where
my mother walks
has fallen into disarray,
and yet how lovely
she appears, how young!
Her dark hair
shimmers in the sun.

How passionate the imprint
of a dream, how soon
the seeing of it fades—
although inside my heart
droplets of the sweetness
that was born of it remain.

Then, little by little,
all dissolves, melts
like snow in Spring; or,
like the Sibyl’s prophecies,
scatter in the wind.
—Constance Rowell Mastores

[Note: Virgil’s Cumaean Sibyl wrote her oracles on tree leaves, arranged and kept aside in a certain order. When anyone approached the Sibyl’s cave to read them, the leaves were disturbed by winds that lifted them into chaos.]


A FRAGRANCE IN THE AIR

The tail end of sunset
yellow-reds the sky,
the trees silhouette
on the ridge.

In the quiet house
the ceiling fan hums,
and the shutter
bars the bright lamp outside

and I am alone now
as I talk to the Apple,
write, write, write,
the world’s without.

It’s empty here,
it’s void, voided,
and the tail end
of her life

barely lingers
as memory of
a fragrance
in the air.
                     —Michael E. Stone
                     28 July 2013


23RD PSALM

“We’ll meet again” didn’t comfort
me when my father was lowered
into Long Island’s red clay soil.
How could it ease me now as
I’m an old woman and he died
a young man? If I believed these
words meant a physical presence
I’d feel despair because he’d
be searching for a college co-ed
barely twenty, and certainly
couldn’t ‘find’ me. Each of my
offspring are older than the calendar
years he’d had! Recently, at the
funeral of a friend, I heard this
expression. Searching faces,
I wondered who truly accepted
that possibility; were any, seated
before the pine box, soothed by the
phrase? Then, as the smooth
wood rolled from this chapel,
I understood ‘soul’. Perhaps
there is no concept of age and we
might meet again. For emotional
strength, the spoken word “we’ll”
should be substituted with a
meaningful term ‘souls’.
                                             — Lois Greene Stone


[untitled]

Her shadow takes you by the hand
though darkness once laid in the wound
soaks through, festers
while the sea comes and goes
looking for more water
carries away the dead
mistaken for waves
for these cars whose lower beams
are honed on the curve coming in
for the kill, row by row
closer and closer, pass after pass
all night circling in pairs

—it’s your shadow now
looking in your eyes, is sure
you are too far from morning
can’t make it back
though the headlights overheat
chased off by the poisonous froth
from your mouth—it’s your shadow
that helps you yell
the way an invisible anchor
is lowered and at twelve each night
splashes across the dry grass
half seaweed half on its side
calling up one mouthful at a time
to hold the sea fast and your hand.
                                                               —Simon Perchik

Previous    Next