Tag Archives: dVerse

Sparkling Imperfection

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Odilon Redon, Head of a Woman

Sparkling Imperfection

I make no resolutions—
for now, my house is cluttered,
my clothes are folded,
or sometimes not.

Yes, ought to, thought to–but
no resolution need be made
to love my children as they are,
without conditions or strings,

they fly on their own capable wings.
while I go on, flawed but mostly happy,
plan what could be,
and strive to enjoy what is

the fizz, the pop,
the joy in every day, marked
with mental asterisks, neuron pin-points,
that twinkle–

sprinkled stars
on life’s textured patches,
pieces in a collage,
messy, but glowing,

growing, then slowing
a full-color work-in-progress. A life.

For Punam’s dVerse prompt on resolutions, she asks us to write a poem inspired by 5 pieces of advice. I found it difficult. I don’t make resolutions, so I hope this satisfies the prompt.

Tree of Dreams

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Odilon Redong, Woman Sleeping Under a Tree

Tree of Dreams

There is an ancient tree
in a secret garden,
white blossoms like pearls adorn
her arms as she reaches to touch
sun and moon.

Here bangs and booms become bird-trills,
each day beats with a new rhythm
green tendrils climb in harmony
and the air is scented with promise.

Ask if I am here,
and I may answer,
this is a place of dreams
caught between bee-breaths
and the falling of a rose petal,
the last echo of violin, a tremolo
in the night. The place where time
is both a wing-flap and endless flight.

The Oracle made me work for this one. I used tiles from two sets, merged, revised, revised again. . .But I guess she approves—because I found the Redon painting above to go with my poem.

I’m sharing this with dVerse Open Link Night.

For Pavel and Six Million

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

For Pavel and Six Million

He saw the last, one butterfly,
a flutter of gold, gone
again
like hope. Here it died, and blue sky
was a tale—once upon,
the end.

Yet still, his soul demanded write–
witness, record despair,
the whys
and soul-sighs, but also brief light
a flash in ash-filled air–
goodbyes.

For dVerse, a very difficult form called the memento. You can read about it here. Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I felt I needed to mark it, especially now as authoritarian regimes are rising–and there are people in the US government who support them. There is a famous poem “The Butterfly” written by Pavel Friedman in Terezin. He was a young man born in Prague, January 7, 1921, and murdered in Auschwitz on September 29, 1944.

All my grandparents immigrated to the US from Belarus and Ukraine before WWI. I know my mother’s father had half-sisters in what became the USSR. They survived WWII (he didn’t know till afterwards). They immigrated to Israel in 1990.

My Grandmothers

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My Grandmothers

They left shtetl and city,
crossed an ocean,
one as a child, one as a teen,
I know them only from stories—
she witnessed a pogrom,
she later eloped. The bed her spiteful mother-in-law
gave her and my grandfather gave way
on their wedding night. From their passion,
I like to think.
She taught my mother how to cook
“American food.”
She died from a then inoperable brain tumor.

She had five sisters, like Tevye’s daughters,
without the matchmaker. Or cow. They all sewed,
a skill not passed along to my mother or me.
She had a beautiful voice,
and more than one miscarriage.
She died in car crash. Seatbelts her legacy.

I carry these tidbits
like notes scrawled on scraps of paper,
tucked into a pocket and found later
when looking for something else.

But I have only one memory,
one short clip played on a loop,
generations of curly-haired women, my baby sister
and me–
a bathroom mirror in a Philadelphia apartment
reflecting their—our—images.
Me taking it in. This is what we do—talk, laugh, love.
I remember.

This is for Sarah’s dVerse prompt on grandmothers. The prompt got me thinking–a first draft.

Winter Blues

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Claude Monet, Floating Ice at Bennecourt

Winter Blues

This landscape sings the blues, tones
absorbed, scattered
in meadows of frost flowers–

but in the staunch fragility of ice, shattered
fragments form prisms
for unexpected rainbows arcs
that sparkle

diamond-sharp,
like the features of the Winter Queen,
beauty without heart, frozen and deadly.

A quadrille for dVerse. The link is still open, if you want to join in the poetry fun. The prompt word is ice.

“Letter from My Mom” (with a reading)

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I’m sharing this poem again, this time with a reading and photo. I’m linking it to dVerse’s Open Link Night Live.

Thank you to editor James Diaz for publishing another of my poems in Anti-Heroin Chic. This one, “Letter from My Mom,” is especially important to me. Not too long ago, a cousin who we have not seen in decades discovered a letter my mom had written to her long ago. She sent a photo of it to my sister. My mother was not a letter writer, and to read her words written when she still thought clearly–and when she also could see well enough to write–this was such a special gift. You can read my poem here.

Prosery: The Pink Rose

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It’s not Marie.

This young man was twice her size, a walking geometry problem composed of long parallel lines and spare angles. Well-worn hiking boots encased his large feet, and a dusty pack perched on his back.

Flight or fight? I wondered, as he approached.

“Excuse me,” he said. His French carried an American accent. “Does this old place have a name?”

Perhaps he was what he seemed, a backpacker seeing France. “I don’t know,” I said, while staring at his backpack.

“Everyone comments on the rose,” he laughed. “It looks like the one embroidered on my blanket when I was found as a baby. It’s the shade of first dawn, a promise. I want to hope everything I do is stitched with its color.”

I smiled politely, but a warning bell clamored in my brain.
The pink rose had been our network’s symbol.

For dVerse Prosery. I’m continuing my series, beginning again with the last line of the previous episode. The prompt line is “Everything I do is stitched with its color” by
W.S. Merwin. from his poem “Separation.” Lisa has chosen such a beautiful line.

Dream Ocean

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Odilon Redon, Ophelia Among the Flowers

Dream Ocean

Time is an ocean, and we
small fish or sailing ships,
a gull in flight from waves to quay,

in dreams, I am all three.

Through walls I coast
where my dead parents–
look remarkably well, almost

as they were, not ghosts,
but shimmering,

and there my children, both young and older,
and dead pets now alive and by my side–
I am every version of myself—sometimes bolder–

in the multiverse of my mind, I find
sea glass treasures, polished by time
returned to me by dream-sea, ephemeral, sublime.

For dVerse, where Ingrid has asked us to write about dreams or visions.

Once Upon a Time

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Edvard Munch, The Storm

Once Upon a Time

Shadows crept,
then grew bolder
dreams were born,
then grew older,

blood boiled,
passion ebbed
now spiders dangle
from silvered webs

in dusty corners
where mice skitter
through this-and-that—
history’s litter.

Those were the days,
they once said,
the toasts of ghosts,
our dead.

A quadrille for dVerse. The prompt word is bold.

The Voice of My Ghosts

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The Voice of My Ghosts

I was never there,
or perhaps I was, then
gone–not lost,
but traveling at a fluctuating tempo,
now presto, now adagio,
a star on the edge of the universe–

you will see my light,
past, present, and future
serial flares that pivot,
turn before to after
and back. Follow, and I will take you
across bumpy, rumble strips
to ethereal flights. It is the legacy of speed–
and radiance–stardust coursing through
your heart.

“The LH 95 star forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.” European Space Agency (ESA/Hubble).
 

For my dVerse prompt. I started writing, knowing that I wanted to begin with that first line, but I had no idea what my poem would be about until I was partway through it. Such a strange feeling.