(Poetry, Vol. 73, No. 1, Pesach 2017)
BONNY BROOK
In cold weather
Summer or winter
Day or night
A residence of delight
Layout, stylistic music,
Short strolls to the beach
Memories, reveries,
Dimmed lights
Once again hearing
Those intermittent calls
The dash and splash
Of the sea and its squalls
At night a surfer
Lazes on a soft bed
Large cushions outspread
Whistling winds outside
Knock at wooden windows
Subliminal sounds
Elemental and profound
“I’ve returned, I’ve returned”
Whistling winds outside
Knock at wooden windows
Subliminal sounds
Elemental and profound
“I’ve returned, I’ve returned
So many years I’ve longed to be here”
He mumbles
“Tomorrow I’ll meet my buddies once more”
A salty taste on his lips
Dozing he whispers
“So many years before
At last I am here!
I’m tidal once more.”
Ben Krengel
LIKE CHINESE WOMEN
Like Chinese women
binding their daughters feet,
my Mother bound our lives
with Sabbath candles
and braided bread.
Always
weaving the candle flame
through her hair
as she prayed,
and always
her eyes binding
our hearts
with ancient fears.
Bernard Levinson
RIPPLES IN THE FABRIC OF SPACETIME
Musings on the collision of two Neutron Stars as reported in Business Day on 17 October 2017
As I shuddered at the thought of our country’s crime
And viewed with distaste my suburbs grime
And smelled with aversion pollution’s slime
My stress slowly eased as I recalled this rhyme
“Ripples in the fabric of spacetime”
Ripples in the fabric of spacetime, they say,
Are caused by gravitational waves far away
That followed an explosion of cataclysmic force.
One thirty million light years away was its source.
What all that means, really does not concern me.
It’s the music of the words that makes me see
Regions beyond the Sun’s heat and rays
Going even further beyond our atmosphere’s haze.
And racing away from Earth’s 24 hour days
Lies a universe with billions of stars all ablaze.
Destruction, creation two sides to one face
Many stars explode, new planeted ones, fill their place
I turn now to a dreadful new thought
One more worrying, one much more fraught.
Mother Earth is awash with vindictive hate
With war, murder, butchery in too many a State.
We read of violent massacres and suicide bombs
Terror attacks, assassinations and state-inspired pogroms.
These malevolently, carelessly and willfully wipe out
Thousands of ordinary folk that are going about
Innocent duties that make up their daily grind.
Our societies are bedeviled by those of evil mind
Violence seems to rule our modern age.
Are we now at the horrifying stage
When Earth, daughter of the Universe, like chastising mothers
Proclaim to sinners but alas, also to all others
“I need you and you need me.
We coexist and are partners in the miracle of life.
Man is no match for the unimaginable power
That creates, resides in and controls the Universe.
So if you want violence, let me show you violence,
Like the violence of colliding neutron stars.
Call it climate change, call it global warming,
Here is yet another deadly warning.”
“I HAVE ALREADY SENT YOU AND WILL CONTINUE TO SEND YOU HURRICANES OF INORDINATE STRENGTH; MIGHTY WINDS THAT TOPPLE TREES AND POWER LINES; RAINFALL THAT FLOODS THE LAND; FIRES THAT BURN THE FORESTS, HOMES AND TOWNS; DEVASTATION TO OUTDO ALL YOUR PUNY ACTS.
HEREAFTER THESE WILL BE THE EARTH’S NEW FACTS”
“But if you cease to violently hate one another
And instead let me be your loving mother
If you stop your virulent shedding of blood
That leaves countless lying dead in the mud
If you don’t yell at a beggar to get out of the way
But instead give him food to live another day.
If you put love and respect in its place
Then I will save the human race.”
POETRY
I pondered and wondered
Where the difference lay
Between poetry and prose
Between these words and those
I questioned and listened; contemplated and read
And finally wide-awake but still dreaming in bed
The answer appeared
Aligned in my head
Poetry is the fusion of
Word art and word music
It is mind images encapsulated
In charismatic cadence
It is word magic
Poetry portrays the sensitivity
Embedded in the psyche
It intensifies insight and imagination
Experience and emotion
Into exquisite, consummate expression
Poetry is the mortal sound of the soul
Charlotte Cohen
