Writing, the words wait in a line,
a row of polished stones
ready to be skipped across the lake.
That is their desire as well.
If I am clumsy, my flung words gravelly,
jagged, they will sink like rocks.
Better, I’ll broadcast simple seeds,
words bursting from a ripe pod,
believing the wind will find for them
a soil rich enough to grow in,
to send up buds, flowers. Their meaning
hangs in the air—waiting for a light breeze.
you were there
tell me please
if you don’t mind
if it is no intrusion
upon what graced
their last gaze
the floor
a chair
the ceiling
after a yawn
a bible friend faithful
your face
perhaps your face
their last light
upon your face
as they read
to your face
other seed
fell among thorns
*Dylann Roof, before he murdered them, sat and listened to the
study of Mark 4 by the nine.
The bone-sore truth was that I envied them:
Two young friends sailing on their will, strong legs
Upright, unlike mine. Dawn’s lace above them,
Rose facades in back. The friends linked hands, posing
Wordless before the lens, their fanning white
Dresses stained blood red. Quick, thirty seconds
To protest a vain conquest—snap, snap, snap—
Before police bear down with rods. No one there
Dares call the war a war—nor talk of shells
And shallow graves. The chief brooks no dissent,
. . . in such strength
Of usurpation, when the light of sense
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
The invisible world, doth greatness make abode . . .
—The Prelude, Book VI
My great-grandmother, Rebbetzin Dena
Of Zamosc, Poland,
Direct descendant of Sephardic Jews,
Inquisition survivors,
Freely offered the town’s poor on Fridays
Candles from her family’s factory
To brighten their gloomy lot:
“Dear Jews, let us kindle Shabbat lights
That joy may dwell in the entire world.”
In the Belzec death camp
She had only the candle of her life to give,
Extinguished by those
Imprisoned in a hellish pit
Of demonic hate forged
In the darkness of the human heart.
The impression of an impression—
a cloud like the wing of an angel, but
indistinct, and in ten minutes
shape-changed. This is how data reach us
from beyond, seductive, blurred
and imprecise.
We’re determined to understand.
We study and discuss until we think
we’ve reached a conclusion, something
logical and steady enough to stand on.
Until reason collapses like a broken
bridge, inadequate.
When the teeth of the harps bit our fingers hard,
sorrow lamed our tongues, the cloud lingered,
the psalmist in us rehearsed a slow death in sadness
falling off-key, fainting fast, grunting hums in lowness.
When our lips added weight in want of good news,
tears soiled us wet in a desert of unfallen dews,
darkness poked fun at the rhythm in our souls,
reproach conducted us in an orchestra of silence.
or two about refugees;
and about
being one, too . . .
about the fear for
flight, from the
slaughter of
innocence, wholly
perpetrated upon
parents about to be
-come bereft of a
Life; safety, security
and hope . . .
legislated by some
maniacal despot
his victims powerless
to resist his on
-slaught’s disregard;
whose hubris knows
no border, bound
-aries, nor ethnicity.