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B”H
10 Adar 5778/February 25,
2018
Dear friend and fellow-poets,
Our new issue,
is now online.
Our theme this time is "flight"—
a word that can be taken in several directions,
as Lois Greene Stone spelled out in a poem
responding to our call:
A
Kite Also Flies
Flight, to one persecuted, presents
a picture of running to find safety.
Leather luggage hauled in one arm
containing handed-down Judaica
and barely enough needs fit into
one suitcase. Safety is the goal.
Freedom an illusion but hoped for.
Flight, to a traveler, sees a sleek plane
with tiny windows and landing fields.
Confident the metal ‘bird’ will take off
and land, destination generally produces
positive feelings.
Flight, in a home or building, brings
staircase and counting steps or noticing
the material of the bannister: wood, metal.
The young jump the distance between
two steps; the aged behold a challenge.
Outer space orbit, birds in v-formation
going south to escape the winter’s cold,
the path of the projectile in a game of darts
or bow and arrow used in summer camp,
one word conjures up anxiety-fleeing,
through gleeful anticipation of arriving
at a location quickly. Perhaps our lives
are both situations not within our control
and our ability to adapt and accept.
Long ago there was a song titled
“Fly Me To The Moon”; we’ve done that!
The poems we received exploring these
various directions form the bulk
of this our present offering.
In launching
the issue, various associations
float up. A song remembered from the 'sixties:
"Stop complaining, said the farmer,
Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly with
Like the swallow so proud and free?"
I always thought that hard on the poor calf,
who was not conscious he had had a choice...
"Anthropos Apteros," as Auden noted
in his poem "The
Labyrinth," is not a bird.
And yet even from the ground we can conceive of
a "greater mind that sees through all at once,
that sees the pattern from above, discerns
the path that leads out of the death-locked maze"
(yours truly, in The Consciousness of Earth)
and try to lift ourselves and others toward it...
We hope you'll find this issue elevating
and may that in us which still seeks to lift us
over the thicket of predicaments
that calls itself reality, soon
take off!
With wishes for a happy spring
EC
Mindy (the theme was her idea) adds:
Flight is life
For who are we when
We do not soar?
Mere caterpillars waiting
to spin and be re-born.
Esther Cameron, Editor-in Chief
Mindy Aber Barad, Co-Editor for Israel
P.S. If further flights
should be inspired
by what the issue holds, it's
possible
that a "flight
supplement" may yet be posted
on our homepage. Also, next
issue's theme
will be Utopia! We hope to start
boarding after the holidays next fall.
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