Jewish Danes Return Home

Defeated, at last, they set us free.

But what remained of home for us?

What family waited for us there, what friends?

Who had saved our small treasures

From thieves and bombs?

What house could welcome us

In our poverty and wretchedness?

We expected nothing

Our fear was unassuaged.

 

But you were there

So many, so many…

With banners and songs,

And cheering “Welcome!

Welcome home!”

 

And we were led

To the homes from which

We were taken,

To our homes, our businesses

Which you had saved for us

During our dark imprisonment.

 

More than your weeks of

proud defiance

More than your years of

stubborn persistence

and acts of courage,

The day of our return,

This day of our return,

This was the greatest gift

The greatest honor.

 

#Denmarkliberation

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MERLIN & THE UNDINE

Drenched in the liquid

Of your voiced poetry

I am transported

Battling in a waterfall

Of mellifluous words

Transformed

I am become Undine

 

Paddling playfully

Atop curl of wave as the melody crests.

Flirting with caresses

While the words

Pool

And slide away

As the poetry like a river

Claims the hills as a right of way.

 

I am Undine

Swimming deep

Where light is unknown

Where ears are more precious

Than eyes ever were,

With words

As my only guide

 

Drenched in the liquid

Of your voiced poetry

I am become Undine

Adrift in a dream

Where the words and I are one.

 

 

#greatpoetryreading

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ONLY PETTY THEFT

Wallet

Empty

Shock

Police

Forms

(my name,

how do I spell my name?)

Voice

Friend

Spelling

(oh, yes, that’s it)

 

Return

Faces

Concern

I speak

“My parents will help,

I guess.”

 

Backs–

In parented care,

My shock judged

Unnecessary, fake.

I stand alone.

 

But one knows—

His eyes watch

As I survey

The room full of

Friends

The room where my purse

Had been.

My eyes meet his

See reflected there

The knowing:

 

No parents

Can replace

No forms record

The loss of trust.

 

#tellastory

 

 

 

 

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ISSA, IN THREE SHORT POEMS

I

Haiku careful words

Irreverent with laughter

Sunshine in Winter

II

When I was broken

With Issa I laughed, smiled

Brief thaws in Winter

 

III

With frozen fingers

Spring rain fell Winter chilled

Issa, too, had tears

 

 

 

#poetrymonth

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THE SILENT POET

He was a poet

Who held his poems

Within

 

Yet poetic was the silence

Rippling through the air

Through which he passed

 

Poetry sang in the veins

Of those he touched

 

He was a poet

Who held his poetry

Within

 

And we have become

The poems he never spoke

 

#dayofsilence

 

 

#poetrymonth

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A DANCING PEN?

A pen to dance?

To twirl and prance

Spinning into arabesque

And pirouette

Gliding over the tracery

The delicate filigree

The perfectly tatted lace

A net to catch and hold

To shape and mold

The sound and sense

That is the essence of poetry?

Ah, no. Not today

Not yesterday.

Nor even perhaps tomorrow.

 

 

#poetrymonth

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SAY NO

Say No and face

The consequences

The shunning

The frowning faces

Turned shoulders

 

Say No

And back away

From the screaming

Anger bouncing

Off your skin

Hurting your ears

Making your stomach churn

 

Say No

And the burden

Is released

The imposed duty

No longer pressuring you

 

Say No

As a child does

To define boundaries

A way to discover self

 

Say No

To be true

To who you are

Not hiding

In shadows

In silence

 

Yes is too easy

Say No

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THE SAGA OF A ROSE

Each petal of this rose

Has a tale to tell—

Each as different as those related

By witnesses of a scene or a life.

 

There will be stories of youth

Breaking from within the greened womb

And of the fading and weight of age;

Legends of the buffetings of fate,

 

Of visitors from afar, of marauders

Seeking the rose’s treasures

And sharing their own stories

Of hunger, danger and duty,

Each leaving behind

In the wreckage they had wrought

Grains of dust from far off places

Which carved imprints of their histories

In hidden, vulnerable places.

 

This rose will surely describe

Hot days thick with heady perfume

Cool nights when fragrance,

Merely teased the air,

Odes of glory, elegies of woe,

(perhaps an idyll of dreams?)

But strongest of all

The lyric joy of life.

 

If only we could hear

The separate voices

Or read the messages

Written in the flesh,

We might finally know why

This rose came to be lying here,

Abandoned and alone,

On the cooling wetness of sand

As the late afternoon tide rolls in.

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A PHOENIX IN THE GARDEN

Ripped from its mother plant

Thrust into unprepared clay-rich soil

The geranium persisted,

Grew without nurture.

But its blooms were few

And nearly hidden

Among its own leaves—

Brief flares of red-orange fire

Within a green surround

Spreading broad leaves

Over the garden corner edging

Onto converging paths.

Ruthlessly cut back

For passing feet,

The geranium compensated

Growing tall, high above

Its neighboring plants.

More blooms appeared

Some bursting upward

As if to touch the sky,

Then the storm came

Whipping the trees

From side to side

Before the rain descended

Like Niagara escaped from capture,

Followed by the pitiless

Pelting of ice pellets….

When the morning sun shone

Down on that garden corner

The geranium lay sprawled

Once more across the paths.

Yet its once skyward blooms

Shot their fire still

Defiant and strong

With a promise to rise again

In fire to reach the sky.

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STRANGE COOKIES

Before she first heard

The Oreo® cookie’s name spat

Like an insult

Before she even understood

How or why it could

Fill the air with acid crumbs

That burned and stung,

The name was just a cookie

And not a favorite.

She preferred Hydrox®

Which were less bitter,

Their center more moist.

 

This vanilla wafer girl

Who spoke out in innocence

To claim equal humanity

For a race not her own,

Before she knew there might be

A penalty for her innocence,

 

After, shunned

But not banished,

A vanilla slightly scorched

To a hurt of butterscotch,

She survived quietly

Though always watched

In the light of fires

That flashed through the sixties.

 

Much later in poems of recollection

In the voice of two races

She spoke aloud once more

But she was stunned

When a friend of the other race

Suddenly smiled and said,

“I can explain you now.

You’re chocolate inside.”

It was an honor

The vanilla girl never expected

Or even thought she’d earned –

To be the opposite of an Oreo.

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