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Work and Love are What Really Matter: a reunion poem for the BHS class of 1958 reunion
1.
Reunion – a coming together after separation
Of those who have a shared experience.
That would be us.
2.
There are many reunions, of course,
An island in the Indian Ocean,
An arena in Dallas,
There’s Reunion the software program
Reunion the screenplay by Harold Pinter
Reunion, a book of poems by poet laureate Fleda Brown,
Reunion, the steamy novel of bondage and sexual erotica by Laura Antoniou
Reunion the TV show
That follows close friends after high school
Each episode a year in their lives
A mystery of love and loss, marriage and death, triumph and scandal,
The hopes and dreams of 18-year-olds
and the realities that mark their lives decades later.
And perhaps winner of best “Reunion” overall,
the song by Jimmy Webb,
With the lyrics:
“In the mathematics of the soul,
When we’re together
We each feel whole.”
3.
Our union begins at the rectangular city block
Carved into what was once a hilltop meadow in the Bronx
Bounded by Creston Avenue and Morris Avenue
184th Street and Field Place
And the building placed on the meadow
Created nearly a century ago
By craftsmen from a different millennium
Morphed into the Bronx HS of Science
Now the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Junior High School
Near the Grand Concourse
Modeled after the Champs-Elysees
Near a deli named Boxers
A little luncheonette
And a billiard parlor
Where I learned the first proposition of Einstein’s theory of relativity
“Time equals money.”
4.
Each one of us here today
More or less as we were there then,
A composition of fifty trillion cells
A mass of genetic nuclei
The energy producing mitochondria
The cytoplasm
(Who says I didn’t learn anything at BHS,
even if I graduated 703rd out of 746 graduates?)
To be intelligent may be a boon,
Said Henry Miller,
But to surrender without reservation,
Is also one of life’s supreme joys.
5.
So what did we intelligent Science graduates surrender to?
To love, of course
To children
And grandchildren
To pets
To careers
To the folly of our egos
To the search for peace
Interior peace
Familial peace
Peace in the wars with our neighbors
Peace in the wars with our parents
Peace in the wars raging inside ourselves.
Attaining peace,
Now there would be a reunion.
6.
In 1958 our class president, Phil Lilienthal,
Won election on a platform asking,
“How will you know what you want
Until you get it?”
Have we gotten what we want yet?
Phil runs a camp in Africa for teens confronting AIDS.
Ask him.
7.
Did you know that Stokely Carmichael,
“Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party
Who personally helped raise the number of registered Black voters in Loundes County Alabama from seventy to 2,670 in the summer of 1965,
Who I personally threw down the stairway from the fifth floor lunchroom in 1957 and later became allied with
was a Science graduate?
What a different path than our own Bill Taubman: Russian history scholar, biographer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize Award,
And Susan Gilbert Levine – Science HS class of 58 historian, scholar, eternal cheer leader, winner of the Elmer’s Glue Award
Or Angel Martinez, social activist and environmental visionary – who personally asked that I send his love today.
Robert Reeback, fine artist and painter.
John Burke, philosopher, pianist, railroad engineer, union man.
Captain Steve Sperman, once Brigade Adjutant of the 4th Army Division, a Jewish kid from the Bronx being saluted by German officers, a man who did what he believed was right: duty, honor, country.
You know we had three sets of twins in our class:
Jack and Fred Mazelis, Judy and Paulette Lambert,
And Constance and Cleonis Golding, now Elaine and Ellen Golding
Their home in Harlem a hub for friends and neighbors
Their family always generous with their time and compassion
As Ellen and Elaine are, to this very day.
8.
Listen to Ralph Berest Bennett, physician, healer, our valedictorian, who said at our graduation, “Let go of insistence on perfection. Be open to what life brings you – it is full of wonderful surprises.”
Or Marcia Klaster, our class salutatorian, who went on to teach biology at Bronx Science who said, “Work and love are what really matters.”
Work and love are what really matters …
9.
That’s what Liz Scoletis, co-captain of our cheerleading squad, Dean at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, whose sons attended our alma mater, also said, “Interesting work is the most seductive of all obsessions.” The most seductive of all obsessions? Maybe only at the Bronx H.S. of Science do cheerleaders say that. But then again, what more is there really to say?
10.
More than that, my classmates, whatever marks we leave are no more than footprints awaiting the next tide,
That we were traders of oxygen for carbon dioxide, which made some plants happy,
The throwers of balls which someone caught,
The kisses we blew which someone bought
The things we learned, the things we taught
We’ve spun our tales
We’ve called the bet
Our lives were precious
They are still yet
There was a school
Built in the Bronx
Where we learned Science
From hacks and wonks
Where we made friends
Where we found love
The plus the minus
The hawk the dove
A full half century
These fifty years
Of joy and sorrow
Of smiles and tears
You see my friends
The planet’s spinning
And all of time has no beginning
And since that’s true (how else can it be?)
There is no you, there is no me
There are our lives
The biosphere
The large, the small
That we hold dear
There was a time
Within our line
When you’d your life
And I had mine
We’ve known the small
We’ve known the great
There was a class
Science ‘58
Come my friends let us continue the conversations we have yet to begin.
© Bruce R. Taub
Poetry
Mesquite Dunes
The sun has set behind the Panamint Mountains
Before me are a pair of well-worn shoes,
A blanket,
The finest sand eons ever created,
Just this side of fairy dust
Outside of Stovetop Wells
Having chewed on the lord’s finest blue veined mushrooms.
The moon, did I say that it was full, arisen
The sand still fine
People speaking foreign languages disappearing
Those picnicking by the light of the moon gone back to their rental vans
Children no longer somersaulting down sand dunes
Outside Badwater the lowest point on the continent
And the Artists’ Palatte
Where god glorifies form and color.
Perhaps a memory here
Three years old
Wanting mother to know as much about me
And my needs and limits
As I knew of hers.
Perhaps a beautiful woman
Perhaps a distant auto slowing
There was a sign down a way,
Obviously placed there for me.
It read, Restoration in Process
Only there was nothing needing restoring
And then I was again alone.
Poetry
Crow’s Songs
1.
Ancestor crow hear me:
fire of black crow wing,
dragonfly.
What wonderfulness is life,
that I and thou in each others’ presence
pick hungrily at dead animals
in needle pines, in the forest of the city
Soaring with our altercrows
over freeways to the sand dunes
Singing our rhythmic song.
2.
Gathering forces we glide,
black crowfeather carries us
on air and prayer.
Maybe we will espy some matters delicious:
dead flesh soft and fragrant
colonels of corn naked in the furrows
some water at somewaters edge.
Easy pickings.
Lovely.
3.
My father was crow and my mother was too
all my sisters and brothers
and, of course, me and you
all our entire nation
vast jet black infestation
we must wed midst our kin
meet our needs from within.
4.
In the airwaves we flutter
dipsy doodle and mutter
this is all that we know
as we go to and fro
there is nothing to strive towards
all we’re given are rewards
simple foods, airs, and waters
and the love of our daughters.
5.
I love to eat me grasshoppers.
6.
In large flocks we gather,
the cawing of our species fills the air.
Our movements ponderous and gracious
we hide in tall grasses
from treetops we call,
the fat cat, the red winged, the human.
Still we multiply.
7.
Time is to flight as shoreline is to sea
Altercrow calls from branch site
Bouncing over stones I press air beneath me
Working hard my wings I lift off
The currents carry me to tall tree.
I am clear and invisible.
Hey you. Caw.
brtaub – 1978
Poetry
Salton Sea
I discover my whitened bones in the desert
where they have resided for decades.
My head is detached from what was once my body
and lies some distance away from my ribs and chest cavity,
which have been gnawed upon by wind, wild animals,
grains of sand, and the passage of time
until naught remained but bone.
And although the bones were scattered
reconfiguration was easy.
We estimate this to have been a male,
an older specimen,
who weighed approximately 85 kilos and was 190cm tall.
Evidence suggests the cause of death
to have been starvation or perhaps a blow to the heart.
Several natural teeth showing signs of wear and care
are still embedded in the mandible.
Six thin metal springs each the size of a blood vessel
are discovered behind his breastplate.
We know no more.
Poetry
Insects in Amber
We are as insects trapped in amber
Last alive in the Eocene,
Which makes us very old,
Moths perhaps.
Our resinous coffins shaped, shined, and fondled
By Cro-Magnon and Baltic men and women
Who burn with wonder
That we were and are and aren’t.
I don’t want to be a bug in amber I cried
And it is hardly being a bug that troubles me
It is being stuck in this terminal goo forever
A prison
A shiver of fear
The terrifying reality of sticky feathers.
I love the pattern on my wings
my dusty pigmented scales
that evoke
female pheromones
and pheromone receptors
sensory neurons
olfactory sensilla
male antennae.
I did not intend this amber fate
He says, as they rest atop one another
atop the branch
on which they are delirious and invisible.
Oh blessed entomology
What is possible
What is true
There is me
And there is you.
Poetry
99 Gratitudes in 3 Minutes – A Yoga Chanting Poem
At the end of my first thirty day yoga teacher training course (which I took with Anna Forrest in Santa Monica in the 1990’s) the attendees were offered the opportunity to speak for 3 minutes and I offered this “poem,” which is meant to be chanted at a pace to be completed in under 3 minutes. Out loud. Try it. Mean it. Or not. Even disobedience deserves a gratitude.
Gratitude is an attitude
Not a platitude.
Be Gratitude.
See Gratitude.
Sculpt Gratitude.
Wear Gratitude.
Where’s Gratitude?
Here’s Gratitude.
Practice gratitude.
Standing. Gratitude.
Death. Gratitude.
Breath. Gratitude.
Downward dog. Gratitude.
To the injured. Gratitude.
To the healers. Gratitude.
In suppression. Gratitude.
For expression. Gratitude.
Courage. Gratitude.
Caring. Gratitude.
Not caring. Gratitude.
Wish it were different. Gratitude.
Wish I were different. Gratitude.
Accepting what is true. Gratitude.
Openness. Gratitude.
To pain, to pleasure, to change. Gratitude.
To jealousy. Gratitude.
To crow pose, to lion, to life. Gratitude.
To the teachers. Gratitude.
To their flaws. Gratitude.
To the slights. Gratitude.
To the mind. Gratitude.
To the heart. Gratitude.
To muscle, sinew, joints, and bone. Our gratitude.
Electrons. Gratitude.
DNA. Gratitude
Our spirit. Gratitude.
Ancestors. Gratitude.
Continuity and flow. Gratitude.
To distrust. Gratitude.
In trusting. Gratitude.
Pranayama. Gratitude.
It’s a feeling. Gratitude.
It’s all thought. Gratitude.
Love of beauty. Gratitude.
Look before you leap. Gratitude.
She who hesitates is lost. Gratitude.
No matter how much I try … Gratitude.
It will never change. Gratitude.
In the rocks and in the stones our gratitude.
Step in the stream. Gratitude.
Don’t give a damn. Gratitude.
I’d give my life. Gratitude.
For our genitals. Gratitude.
And our effort. Gratitude.
Inspiration. Gratitude
Transformation. Gratitude.
Warriors I, II, III. Gratitude.
To the liberators. Gratitude.
Thinking. Gratitude.
Don’t know mind. Gratitude.
Fish, fire, phoenix. Gratitude.
Mother, brother, straddle. Gratitude.
Tomorrow. Gratitude.
Bird of paradise. Gratitude.
In beauty. Gratitude.
The hoop of our people. Gratitude.
Loved and lost. Gratitude.
Humility. Gratitude.
Futility. Gratitude.
Magic. Gratitude.
Tragic. Gratitude.
The arrival. Gratitude.
The departure. Gratitude.
The explicit. Gratitude.
The unstated. Gratitude.
In the Word. Gratitude.
The inversions. Gratitude.
The unconscious. Gratitude.
All the dreams. Gratitude.
And the dreamers. Gratitude.
To be small. Gratitude.
To be huge. Gratitude.
Active feet. Gratitude.
Chanting. Gratitude.
To the monk. Gratitude.
To those present. Gratitude
And those absent. Gratitude.
To our graces. Gratitude.
For the dolphins. Gratitude.
Tears and fears. Gratitude.
Competition. Gratitude.
To the guys. Gratitude.
And the goddess. Gratitude.
No one asks. Gratitude.
Bring it on. Gratitude.
Forward bend. Gratitude.
In the dark. Gratitude.
In the light. Gratitude.
Namaste. Gratitude.
Blessed silence. Gratitude.
013 – Her Scream
The jury is out for about two hours. It is a good sign. How could they conceivably convict someone of first degree murder in such a short time. The evidence is not complex. She gave the statement. Where is the evidence of her shared intent. I take hope.
The court officers bring Yvonne back into the courtroom. They take off her handcuffs and she sits on my right side closest to the jury box. Judge McDermott comes out onto the bench. The court officer announces that the jury is entering the courtroom.
“Will the jurors and the defendant please remain standing,” he says. It is the custom.
“Have the jurors reached a verdict?” asks the clerk, and they nod affirmatively.
“Will the court officer please hand me the verdict slip.”
The court officer walks up to the foreperson and takes the verdict slip from her. She hands the paper to the clerk. The clerk hands it to the judge. The judge takes out his reading glasses and reads the verdict to himself and makes sure it is signed and filled in properly. He hands it back to the clerk. The clerk hands it back to the foreperson. It is such an elaborate dance routine.
“Ladies and gentleman of the jury,” reads the clerk, “on indictment number seven one six nine four three zero charging the defendant Yvonne Smith with murder in the first degree what says the jury, guilty or not guilty, madam forelady?”
“Guilty,” says the foreperson.
“Guilty of what,” asks the clerk.
“Guilty of murder in the first degree,” says the forelady.
Yvonne’s scream is never forgotten.
LAW STORIES
012 – Adversarial Relations
You’re always paranoid as a trial lawyer, at least you should be. Indeed, if you’re not paranoid as a trial lawyer you’re not doing something right. The entire legal system is based on adversarial and conflictual relationships, the myth being that by throwing two people with opposing views into an arena that the truth will emerge victorious. I don’t think it works that way, but I also really don’t know a better way to resolve conflicts. And neither do you. So if you’re not paranoid, if you’re not worried someone is trying to best you as a lawyer, you dramatically increase your odds of being hurt. I didn’t quite understand this when I started practicing law, but it is intensely and essentially true. And I learned the lesson quickly.
One of the amazing things about these adversarial relationships in the law is that they do not really have to be antagonistic. Oh, they may well be and often are, but it is not integral to the practice. Think of boxers trying to beat one another, to hurt one another, to score the most points, or knock the other man senseless. Yet when the fight is over the two fighters shake hands with one another, honored that their adversary had given all that he had to the battle, win or lose, so too football or soccer games. Give it your all and shake hands at the end of the game. Someday you may be back in the arena with that very same person now on your team. What goes around comes around.
“So don’t yell at me, please,” I tell the lawyer on the other end of the phone line. “I know you are passionate about this case, and so am I. And please don’t be snooty either. If you think that’s efficacious in front of a jury feel free to do so, but you and I are just talking to one another and there is no way you can bully or threaten me. Just cite the law and the facts correctly and give me your perspective or spin as to the merits of your position without the dramatics. We’re talking probabilities here. Of course I understand the weakness in my case. I’d be a complete idiot if I didn’t see the weaknesses of my position. The absolutely best offense in the law is a defense. I get it. But don’t try to bully me into submission, because, unless you’re an absolute rookie, you know that no case is a guaranteed winner or a guaranteed loser and the best we can usually do for our clients is reach some understanding regarding the realistic odds and a more of less fair outcome. So do me a favor, please, and imagine I know the weaknesses of my case, and know them well, and help us along by acknowledging that you understand the strengths of my case and the weakness of yours.” Hey, that’s my rap.
It is the coin of my realm and separates the wheat from the chaff. Any lawyer who says he has never lost a case, or can guarantee the outcome of a case, just hasn’t put in the time. Or has a connection that is very dirty. And I hate dirt. That’s why I try so hard to be honest. I know that sounds like a bit of an oxymoron coming from a lawyer, but it’s not. I know the other lawyer will bend the truth to gain a victory, will stretch the rules, and will take advantage of loopholes and of my ignorance. I do the same. We call that a clean fight, a fight that follows established rules of conduct. It is when the fight isn’t clean that the greatest danger arises for the advocate.
All this talk about relationships between lawyers does not necessarily apply to the lawyer’s clients who may lie and cheat all the time in the name of self-protection and non-disclosure and the lawyer may never know. Indeed, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
With the police the rules of the game become even stranger. Police are professional witnesses, like paid expert witnesses. They have a position and a goal and will go to extremes to achieve it. It is jokingly called “testilying” and it goes on all the time, because the police do not like to lose, because they are self righteous and because they know right from wrong and have a sharp sense of what “justice” is, and it may not be what happens in a courtroom.
LAW STORIES
011 – Met State
1980. You can’t really imagine what it was like and how its face changed with the passage of years and seasons. I took that job simultaneously with beginning law school nights, right after falling out of the tree and dislocating my right elbow, right after meeting Lynne, right after Steven’s father died. But here I go again, back to World War II, back to the Bronx and Brooklyn, back to the old countries, back to the cave. Never should have been in that tree.
Metropolitan State Hospital was huge, immense, occupied hundreds of acres of incredibly beautiful pastures and woodlands in the suburbs just outside of Boston. There was a history to the place and old photographs and archives to document it. It was one half do-good social services for the chronically mentally ill and one half Bedlam. Whoever build the hospital had been inspired by an era of plenty and hope and kindness. Of a largess that seems by today’s lights boundless. The physicians were the royalty of this medieval estate. Their flocks and charges were the abandoned mentally ill. The staff was the peasantry who minded the flock. Sometimes it was benign, even healing. Sometimes it was blackjacks and straightjackets. Some times it was all lobotomies, or electroshock, brains in formaldehyde in jars, and a potter’s field for the unnamed dead.
LAW STORIES
009 – The Columbian Woman
The Columbian woman with three kids in talking to me across my desk. Her three kids are nice enough, but very distracted, impatient and bored. The mother is here because her six year old has been modestly injured in an auto accident. My job includes helping her to find treatment for the boy’s ongoing discomfort and pain. Most medical providers I know of do not like to treat young children. I call up a physical therapist who practices near where the woman and her children live. I ask if he’ll treat a young child.
“How young?” he asks.
“Seven going on eight,” I answer.
“But she’s only six,” the woman whispers across the desk.
I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Please,” I whisper.
“But I’m a Christian,” she says.
“Mommy, all lawyers are liars,” her six year old eight year old says.
I look at him, playfully surprised. “How do you know that,” I ask him.
“I saw it on television.”
“And you believe everything you see on television?”
“Yeah,” he says.
LAW STORIES