She appeared without notice,
not there, then there, she
half angel, half siren, half mad.
She appeared like Casseopaiea’s
faint shadow taking form,
stepping out of the sudden fog.
She was nymphlike, sylphan,
demanding attention, craving
the eyes of all who passed.
No one spoke to her, whether
out of fear or disinterest and she
grew angry, larger still, until
the full moon was clouded over,
Casseopeia returned to her throne,
and the ethereal one was gone.
I spent too much time looking
backward, looking into the past,
looking into the mirror
to frame a dream history
of my desires and fears.
He called one morning, left
a message, “Mother died,
more details will follow.”
A mother his by birth,
mine by legal act.
I should have felt stunned
anger, I said quietly to myself
he’s cocky, has issues, and went
about momentary mourning.
That is the psyche of the adoptee who
was never family, always an adjunct.
Later my antediluvian dreams
gave way under a torrent
of deoxyribonucleic acid rain.
She who I imagined in the mirror
took name, took shape from
and old yearbook, offered
a history, a family, a heritage.
When I knelt at her grave
she told me her story
in hushed tones, or was it
the breeze in the pines on the hill
overlooking the Kanawha?
I bid her farewell that day,
placed a pebble on her headstone,
stroked the cold marble
and mourned an untouched mother.
They took up shovels,
pickaxes, bare fingers
to pry up the seedlings,
the saplings just taking
root and the seeds
just planted still watered
by the sweat and tears
of those who lovingly
tilled the brittle soil.
They offered nothing
in return, barren ground
where only anger grew,
fertilized by fear, by
by greed, by blindness.
Will we sit by and watch
as promises wither under
an ever stronger, more
glaring sun, as hopes are
blown away by arid winds,
or will we again return
to the soil, start over,
our faith now perennial.
There is a certain perfect
symmetry in both life
and death.
We do not remember
the moment at which
we were born.
We will not remember
the the moment at which
we will die.
We did not fear
the moment at which
we were born
why then should we fear
the moment at which
we will die?
Every Sunday morning my parents,
usually my father at mother’s direction
would drive me the four blocks
to attend Sunday school.
I could easily have walked, a long
block and a half by cutting through yards,
but they were afraid of I have
absolutely no idea what.
My friends that weren’t there with me
were probably in church so
it wasn’t like I had anywhere else
I might go, anything else I could do.
I never asked why my parents were
so insistant I attend the school, they
knew I’d be Bar Mitzvahed with or
without the Sunday mornings,
and they were Jews only in the loosest
secular sense, and I was in those
awkward years and the only thing
else that came to mind, fed by
my father’s not so well hidden stash
of Playboy’s was too grim to imagine
and given how little they liked to be
around one another, could be rejected.
They arrive after a long flight
from tyranny, from oppression
from the nightmare of endless
fear, from hunger, from faith
denied, from the bottomless
depths of poverty, scarred
memories etched in their souls,
hoping for an ending as much
as wishing for a new beginning.
They have been here, a new
generation, raised on the stories,
versed in the painful history,
still residual anger born
of love for those who fled,
without the pain of experience,
who can forget when it is
others who now wish only
to arrive to the freedom they
have known since childhood
First appeared in Circumference, Issue 5, June 2022
https://poetryatpi.wordpress.com/
We dance between wanting
to know what is out there,
and fearing that we are not
any longer unique, just one
more in an endless stream.
And then we have to wonder
if the others, such as they are,
wonder what is out there,
and fear that they are not
any longer unique, just one
more in an endless stream.
Has it always been this way,
have some already come
and gone in the flash
of a dying star, or grown
barren from neglect and greed?
Some want to know what
is out there, as out there
could become the only place
separating us from extinction.
We are planning the funeral
for Roe today, eulogies
fully ready, for we are certain
the death was slow and painful
and now all we can do is mourn.
Some we know will not attend,
Brown out of fear, knowing
the eventual consequences
of this loss, Miranda because
he is already marked, hounded
by those in power, an easy mark.
Sullivan may be there, happy
that he can go after them again
if they even speak his name
innocently or by mistake.
It will be a sad moment, one
we have dreaded of late, one
we thought would never come
and we will mourn our dear friend
Stare Decisis*, stabbed in the back
by those who vowed to defend him.
N.B. As you may know or have guessed, I am a happily retired attorney, who was taught that stare decisis should be sacrosanct. Brown is the landmark school segregation case, Miranda the much eroded protection for those under police custody, and Sullivan the case on defamation establishing a higher standard that plaintiffs must meet if they are public figures. It remains a hallmark of First Amendment law regarding freedom of the press.
Stare decisis is the doctrine that courts will adhere to precedent in making their decisions. Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided” in Latin.
When you got off the boat
you must have been scared,
but getting away from that life
made the fear bearable.
I have no idea how you ended
up in West Virginia, it wasn’t
at all like Lithuania, and Jews
might have had two heads I imagine.
But you all made do, made
a community, invited others
and were tolerated if odd,
and I am certain you wonder
what happened, why now those
or their children’s children’s
children are so willing to shun
others whose only sin, like yours,
was wanting to get away
from horror, from persecution,
from fear, and make a life
in the hills of West Virginia.
Along the banks of the barge canal
in the village park, a man
older, his hair white, almost
a mane, sits on the breakwall
feeding Wonder bread
to the small flotilla of ducks.
Tearing shreds of crust
from a slice, he casts it
onto the water and smiles
as they bob for the crumbs.
He tells them the story
of his life as though
they were his oldest friends.
My Anna, he says,
was a special woman,
I met her one night
in the cramped vestibule
of an Indian take away
in London during a blackout.
We heard the sirens and then
a blast, not far off.
She grabbed my arm in fear.
She was from Marlow-on-Thames,
she lived in a small flat
in the Bottom, she worked
days in a millinery,
and at night tended bar
at the Local, until the war.
She’s been gone two years now
and I miss her terribly
especially late at night.
A goose slowly swims over
awaiting her meal, she
looks deeply into his eyes.
How are you, dearest Anna,
it is not the same without you
late at night when the silence
is broken again by the sirens.
First Published in Friends & Friendship Vol. 1, The Poet, 2021
an old writer and his words 