Wednesday, July 23, 2025
SIDEWAYS THROUGH THE PARK WITH WITTGENSTEIN
Monday, July 21, 2025
NB
Praying to a wine god is always
A chancy business but, if you must:
Smiling Dionysus wins all hearts;
Angry Dionysus burns down houses
Not caring who's inside;
Faceless Dionysus is too drunk
To remember who he is. (Scholars say
He's the one who thought hitching panthers
To a chariot was a really good idea.)
Friday, July 18, 2025
PAINTED MUSIC
In Guercino's drawing of Mary Magdalene
She lies on a beach, plainly troubled.
God or someone with the authority
To dispatch angels has sent her three;
Two of them loll on clouds. The third,
Wings outspread, hovers above her
Playing a violin. She looks surprised;
This strikes me as a fair reaction.
(I've no good reason for my belief
That the angel is playing Stardust.)
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
APPEARING TODAY
You've rented an elephant and a giraffe,
Put Silenus on a donkey, hired sturdy Bacchantes
To keep him from falling off. You've a chariot
With panthers hitched to it and any number
Of gleeful drunken folk one of whom
Is blowing a long horn. Bacchus, though
Isn't here; drinking glass after glass won't bring him.
Propped in his cart, loosely holding
The panthers' reins, is some local god
Without even a face yet. How beautiful he is!
How extremely terrifying!
Monday, July 14, 2025
SURVIVOR
This is possibly the worst scarecrow
In the entire world:
An old hat and some ragged pants
Hanging on a cross with a long stick
Leaning purposelessly next to it.
The farmwife throws up her arms
Telling the scarecrow it's all
A matter of attitude.
Friday, July 11, 2025
ATLAS
One day the authorities come by, saying
You've been selected to carry the world;
Atlas is forgiven at last and while they've nothing
Against you they've nothing for you either.
You protest, saying isn't Atlas huge, a very giant
And strong as a mountain? A common misperception
They say. He's actually small and frail;
A pipsqueak any wind could carry off. No one
Has the strength to carry the weight of the world.
Atlas did it for the same reason you will:
We're telling you to.
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
EDITOR
I've been trying to write a poem
About the Death of Dido but my tablet,
Having no respect for the classics,
Keeps changing it to the Death of Fido
Which would be a different thing entirely.
Monday, July 7, 2025
AN ENCOUNTER
A stone in the middle of a sidewalk square
About an inch and a third long by three quarters
Of an inch wide. A little scuffed; if a rock
Can lead a hard life this one has. I pick it up
Of course -- I've been picking up rocks for most
Of my life. When I was a kid I'd bang them open
With a bigger rock not because I'd the makings
Of a geologist but to see the inside and to smell
The gunpowder smell two rocks pounded together make.
A grey stone, flat on one side, rounded on the other.
It can't have been on the sidewalk long; someone
Would have kicked it into the grass or the street.
Waiting for me, then. The round side fits
Into the hollow of my fingers, the flat accepts
My thumb rubbing it. A worry stone, perhaps.
I put it in my pocket. It may be that this stone
Was meant not for me but for Rebbe Aaron
My ancestor who was kept from floating off
By the stones in his pocket . He died in 1772
But stones, notoriously, have only hazy notions of time.
Friday, July 4, 2025
FAMILY
Once in a while I write a poem about
My ancestor Aaron of Karlin who could,
According to legend, fly or at least float and who
Might have drifted who knows where if his wife
Hadn't put stones in his pocket. Recently,
I've become more interested in his wife who,
Like me, her descendant, couldn't fly
Or if she could didn't make a fuss about it.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
DESCENT
About my ancestor Reb Aaron tradition and my mother
Agree: he could fly. Nothing fancy, mind you;
He wasn't a show off and didn't do Immelmans
Or Figure-8s in the skies over Karlin. Mostly he floated
Just a bit off the ground, rising higher when he prayed
Or was lost in thought. His wife (who was also
My ancestor, come to think ofit) would slip rocks
Into his pockets so he wouldn't float away entirely.