Simon Perchik -------- five poems

SIMON PERCHIK

10 WHITBY LANE

East Hampton, NY  11937

(631)324-2834

simon@hamptons.com

www.simonperchik.com

*

Even the colors are anxious, carried

as if its new home above ground

would skimp the way all rows use dirt

cut in two with nothing in between

–you suddenly bring it a darkness

use one hand to comfort the other

though you’ve done all this before

have no faith in mornings :clumps

that want only to forget, just lie still

holding one end close, for a long time

sorted out and unfamiliar fields

taken place to place in flowers

in ribbons, string, thread, something

feeble, tied to the dissolving Earth

by this shadow and your arms.

*

As if the paint poured across

could stave off rot, circle down

though this gate heads back

once it leaves your arms –by itself

whitening the trees already stone

certain you will come here forever

bring twigs, let them sweeten

soften on the ground you bite into

struggling to float, unable to breathe

or unfasten her skirt –your mouth

oozing the way mornings arrive

to dry, kept moist by these dead

and berries dressed as roots and grass

surrounded, filled with the taste

from her eyelids not yet flowers.

*

This rotted log yes and no

longs for the stillness

that is not wood though you

are already inside, seated

at a table, a lamp, clinging

the way all light arrives alone

except for the enormous jaws

once shoreline closing in

without water or suddenness

–you lay down a small thing

and the Earth is surrounded, fed

slowly forehead to forehead again.

*

You reach for lullabies, left over

and the slow crawl half whispers

half where your lips ache, float

the way this empty cup still wobbles

will break apart, overloaded

disguised as two steps closer and alone

then fill your arms with its darkness

seeping through, breathing out

not yet an embrace, not yet the mouth

where your fingers end, surrounded

by more and more dirt, a small room

here, there, there, not yet asleep.

*

It’s never dry –another gust

though this elevator is carried

the way you count backward

for hours and the door flies open

lets in a sea half hillside

half rising through the floor

–you walk in to sleep, begin

with the sound sand makes

when scattered for footprints

still following the silence

between 10, then 0, pressed

against your face –tides

are used to this, start out

to forgive, then lay down

as emptiness and a home.

Andrena Zawinski ------- Three Haibun

Singing Bird Haibun

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, 

and the grass grows by itself.” Basho

It is not a steely-eyed egret nor heft of pelican but just a singing bird that catches my fancy 

from a balcony perched across from pines lining the marina. Here I make watch of another 

shifting sky, distant buoy sounding swells in the bay, common robin chiming in on the wind.

resting in my palm 

it might pulse at the heart line

practice its pitch

But this bird makes its roost in the forked trunk, where branches droop heavy with cones. 

Like this robin, I try to perfect a voice in the intimate language of birds, call back at it, 

parroting the rise and fall of its wistful warbling, practicing the melodic whistling.

the robin carols

in a cathedral of pine

all feather and trill

Everything readies for something - above, wide wings of dark crows fan the horizon. Below, 

a ray steers clear of a row. A dog splashes into the water, his boy crying for a lost oar. 

Twilight settles on tapping riggings and masts, breeze in the tinny chimes, spring in the song.

the clouds feathering

disappear into sunset

the bird still singing

"Singing Bird" received Tiferet Journal's  1st Place Award in their Carriage House Contest.

 Last Gifts 

 (Haibun for Keiko)

  The truth is not always beautiful, 

  nor beautiful words the truth. 

  Lao Tzu

She is soon to board the plane for Osaka, and you try to avoid farewells. 

She is returning, after thirty years, to her childhood home to nurse 

the ailing mother--oya koko, filial piety, she reminds with a stern stare. 

Later you will learn the return is really for her own care, these her own 

last days. 

You lop off the American Beauty blooms, plop them into the seamless 

goldfish bowl she brings on her last visit. There is also the single teacup 

whose lip, she says, is delicate as a woman’s kiss. Dressed the way you have

 never seen her before--blue kimono under haori stitched in silver apple blossoms, 

phoenix fan in the pocket--she slips out of the coat, carefully folds and smooths it, 

places it ceremoniously into your outstretched arms.

The roses remain for a time, then spent, wilting petals drop down onto the 

furoshiki square she once wrapped around large bowls of salmon and seaweed

in sweet rice--its slender cranes winging the edges toward some unseen distance. 

The rose scent lingers even as the sight of her begins to dim.

heavens darkening 

a red winged blackbird

blazes skyward like a sword

Nocturnal Haibun

I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight’s play of light, 

when you name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl’s breast.--Kawabata

dancing on night air

luminaries of the dark

in concerts of light

Caravaggio powdered his paint with their iridescence.

In Frost’s garden, they were real stars to fill the skies.

Children contain their flickering dance in Mason jars, 

smear the emerald brilliance around fingers and wrists.

They are Cherokee torches turning dark into starry nights, 

Japanese hotaru of passionate love, Chinese hing hoy 

souls of the dead.

sparks of fireflies 

ignite the night’s shimmering

nocturnal courtship 

Mary Lou Nielsen ----- poem sequence

Poems from a Previous Me – 1968

(Thoughts on the War in Vietnam)     Mary Lou Nielsen

I.

Dylan Thomas Breathes Again

Summertime swishes on a bank of dew,

Leaves shiver and quake,

waterfowls live long in a sea of time,

while fishes swim in love.

Tenderness breathes soft with

lips moist and feathery,

the burning tongue, the shivering love,

the desert foam of ages

and the lamp-quick laughter of a demon

beckon to all.

Only windy time now stalks the gardens

of the limitless night sky,

blue and stilled by the emptiness of cold.

The butt end of a burning star lights the sky,

and the gilt-edged fox guards her young

on the silhouette of doom.

II.

Revelation

Would I, could I, remember truth's eyes

in a vociferous calm resting clear,

Then would I meekly throw to God a piece of

rouletting Jesus asking, Saviour, Saviour,

Wherefore art thou but only dead in a

cheap onslought of vigor,

Chanting rhymes in ogling solitude,

Beating with lung worms cancerous spells

onto unknown gates.

Forgive us for forgetting time's trueness as we do

Forgetting the reality of pain's slanting turgid river,

Flooding onto unknown banks – dying, dying

As soon as moments show clearly the

calcification of our slime.

III.

Conviction

I will know because only then will I go

To London Town – and break the battering bridge and send it away,

E'er I remember how it once uplifted many kingly days

and burned to the ground thrice o'er.

And I will build a sea of dreams

To swim in madly, whereas the world turns just as mad

And I will build to you the monument of day

And the miracle of night

And show you songs not sung

And you shall tell me of your heaven that you made so mad

What a hasty job that breaks just as hastily

In the fidgeting calm of silence you will see me as I truly am,

And you of the virtuous thorn shall bring me down.

IV

March Blowing in May

Blow winds, you scare me with your whispering car rush,

Your lights which you uncover when the trees bend low –

Low, ye winds, lower yourself to me.

My breath is of thy heart –

Blow, winds, in tornadoes and festoons,

Harlequin swirls of whispering gods nod to passers-by.

We must remember now

In the dawn of early summer,

After the new spring has passed,

Birds no longer twitter and chirp

But are lulled to sleep

In deep, dense jungles of gloating earth.

Three poems ------ Sigrun Susan Lane

                                                        

The Botanist

From the bus, she bird-walked

the narrow parking strips,

green Edens of wildness,

bent to pick the plants---

stalk, root and flowers

to be pressed between wax,

to be named from Ada Georgia’s Manual of Weeds.

Each specimen labeled, its seed splayed.

She gathered the unwanted,

the uninvited adventurers,

the wanderers, windswept weeds

from overgrown parking strips.

She called them by their common names

and by their Latinate, meadow butter cup, Ranuculus acris,

common chickweed, Stellaria media,

yarrow, Achillea Millefolium,

and mother’s heart, capsella Bursa-pastoris

which grows everywhere.

The pages she gathered

in black notebooks which grew fat

with weeds as she wandered farther

afield and returned triumphant,

her face flushed, her hat askew,

a clutch of bane in her hands.

She found them beautiful,

as she found beauty

in the uninvited and unexpected,

like the errant husband

everyone said should go

but stayed, like the five

children that filled

her noisy messy rooms.

                                                        Sigrun Susan

Crash

A logging crew got there first,

found the crumbled wreck.

They left in the pilot’s seat the body

of my father with his broken head,

behind him, my mother

with her last words whispered.

They lifted out the living man

and the living woman,

put them on solid ground,

relayed back for help

for survivors, ambulances

out of Port Angeles.

They heard this machine,

death roaring out of the sky,

destroying all before it---

trees toppled, limbs shirred

and scattered, then the crash---

wings torn off the plane,  

the plane half buried and smoking---

twisted metal wreckage.

This crew had seen bad luck,

a man pinned by a fallen snag,

a choke-chain unset,

a fall from a tree climb, but this—

That night driving home one logger

saw a vision of a plane hurtling down

at him, another dreamed he was the pilot,

another dreamed of falling over and over.

The hurt had cut its way into them,

as it did into tree bark, left it’s scars.

For what they witnessed at the site,

for what they saved,

for what they could not save,

for what they salvaged

and brought out,

Bless them.

Cathedral

I would rise and go there

to see the place

that swallowed them,

where their spirits entered.

Somewhere on that mountain side

stand witnesses- fir, cedar,

hemlock, among salal,

sword fern, gorse and granite.

I would go on foot to find them,

cut my way up through the brush,

listen for the silence

they found that final day.

I could not look before

at the place where the plane fell,

nosed its way to earth to rest,

wings torn from its dragonfly body.

I will not see scars on the trees-

by now the forest has claimed

and covered all. 

The undergrowth filled in---

chokeberry, brambles, fern. 

Wounds healed over, bark

thickened, but scars are deep

and burn under the skin.

But they’re not here.  Restless spirits,

they wait at the crest of the mountain,

or near the river’s mouth

where the stones are polished smooth,

and berries are sweet in the sun,

where the salmon run and the catch is good.