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Death of the Dolphin
There had been small craft advisories,
Their boats were fewer,
Seas ran five to eight feet
With variable winds out of the northeast
Gusting to forty knots
Moving with the pod
Warm southern waters flowed into the currents.
As the storm abated and seas subside
We pass Provincetown
‘Round the horn
Passed the buoy
Into the sensations of the bay
Seas two to four feet
Sun obscured and waters warm
Echoes echo over the distances
Off the top and bottom
The floor and the air
Wave action pushing me toward land
Been in these waters before.
Now slightly disoriented
Separated from the group
In too shallow water
The waves are foamy
Something’s not right
Sensing hazard
The tides confusing
I bottom out
Helpless and alone
Sand below and around me
Socked in on my belly
I do not wrestle
I die, fin up,
Without struggle,
Resigned on the shore.
POETRY
Tryst with Death – Gina Puorro
death asked me to join him for dinner
so I slipped into my favorite black dress
that I had been saving for a special occasion
and let him walk me to our candlelit tryst.
He ordered a ribeye, extra rare
I ordered two desserts and red wine
and then I sipped
and wondered
why he looked so familiar
and smelled like earth and memory.
He felt like a place both faraway
and deep within my body
A place that whispers to me
on the crisp autumn breeze
along the liminal edges of dusk and dawn
somewhere between dancing
and stillness.
He looked at me
with the endless night sky in his eyes
and asked
‘Did you live your life, my love?’
As I swirled my wine in its glass
I wondered If I understood the thread I wove into the greater fabric
If I loved in a way that was deep and freeing
If I let pain and grief carve me into something more grateful
If I made enough space to be in awe that flowers exist
and take the time to watch the honeybees
drink their sweet nectar
I wondered what the riddles of regret and longing
had taught me
and if I realized just how
beautiful and insignificant and monstrous and small we are
for the brief moment that we are here
before we all melt back down
into ancestors of the land.
Death watched me lick buttercream from my fingers
As he leaned in close and said
‘My darling, it’s time.’
So I slipped my hand into his
as he slowly walked me home.
I took a deep breath as he leaned in close
for the long kiss goodnight
and I felt a soft laugh leave my lips
as his mouth met mine
because I never could resist a man
with the lust for my soul in his eyes
and a kiss that makes my heart stop.
POETRY BY OTHERS
Valentines Day in Israel
The waves are rough in the sea of love
This Valentines Day
Crows fly into the wind
Hoping for leverage
Seeking support
Buffeted though free
They call but no one hears
Accusations fly through the air
The sounds of lovers unheard, unheralded
Fractured families longing for simplicity and rest
Comfort, unambiguous pleasure
Safe harbors to anchor in
Sometimes it feels like a kiss
Sometimes just a breeze passing by
The sea is rough in Israel
This Valentines Day
Waves crash onto the shore
Depositing beautiful shells
The tiny homes of lonely sea creatures
Onto the sandy beach
That Palestinians are forbidden to walk upon
Where a man draws names on the beach with sticks
Then draws a big valentine around the names
Then writes the words, “Free Palestine”
His heart breaking with the weight of love
He builds a wall to protect his creation in the sand
But the sea is restless and just
And softly erases it all.
POEMS FOR PALESTINE
I Sleep with Rachel Corrie
I sleep with Rachel Corrie
Meditate on her message and meanings
She is smiling though dead
Her head tilted to her left
Her head tilted to her left
Her blond shoulder length hair
Tucked behind her ears
An all American girl
Who loved justice and the Palestinian people
Crushed by a Cat D9 bulldozer
With a restricted field of vision
And several blind spots
This last part sounds familiar no doubt
Now but a memory, a martyr
A poster on the door
Of a home in Palestine
Where her mother comes to visit
To see for herself what moved her daughter
Who wrote
“A massive military machine is killing
The people I’m having dinner with
I am witness to the destruction of a people.”
The older Palestinian woman
In whose home the poster I sleep with hangs
Has seen more than her share of humiliation
Jail
Her land stolen
And death
She says to Rachel’s mother
“There is a field where flowers grow in our village
That is called Rachel Corrie
There are streets and plazas named for her
Your daughter is our daughter
Our daughters are your daughters
We will never forget your daughter
She is with us every day
Every time this door slides closed
Every time this door slides opened”
An American Court found
The bulldozer that killed Rachel
Was paid for by U.S. Government funds
But declined to rule on the merits
Concluding that whether the financing of such bulldozers was just
Or appropriate
Was a political question
Not entrusted to the Judicial Branch
On the same day Rachel was killed
Nine Palestinians were also murdered by Israeli forces
Including a man aged 90
And a child aged four
While Rachel, second wife of Jacob
Who stole her father’s idols
Was cursed unintentionally
By the husband who loved her
And died
The way of women upon her
Her doors slid open
Her doors slid closed forever
Tears in her eyes
Words on her lips
Crying for the end
To her family’s suffering
© BRTaub, Ja’ayus, Palestine – Valentines Day 2008
POEMS FOR PALESTINE
The Siege of Gaza
If Hamas is a terrorist organization
What does that make the occupying,
land-grabbing,
wall erecting,
falsely imprisoning
nuclear weapon-bearing Israelis
and the Israeli government?
The only true democracy in the Middle East?
“Terrorist organization” is a label;
that Gaza is sealed is a fact.
No food or medicine allowed in.
Think Warsaw Ghetto.
Think children starving and dying
Think “never again.”
Besides,
Hamas saying it is going to destroy Israel
is a bit like the Sioux on reservations
saying they are going to destroy the U.S.,
when as we know,
the U.S. is destroying the U.S.,
and Israel is destroying Israel.
POEMS FOR PALESTINE
Furry Bug
On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
Temperature still in the high seventies,
Streetlights not working,
I step from my car as a huge fluttering bug
Flies smack into my lips.
I do not see it.
I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
I blow and brush it away quickly,
Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
I respond in surprise and shock,
But without fear or disgust.
I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
Not assaulted or attacked.
And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed
A happenstance of fate,
A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
A princess living in the body of a bug,
The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
Calling forth my attention
“Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
“Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
Live life fully aware
And appreciative of me,
Fly around in the muggy dark night
Kissing strangers with me
Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”
I dream that night I stand beside the rushing waters
Of a mountain stream which calls to me,
Bids me enter,
To be pulled along in the frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
I imagine being in the water.
I imagine being water.
I am a furry bug
I kiss your lips.
POETRY
Winter Fog
During the night a warm front
Passes over the frozen snowpack
And with it a sense of hope
And forbearance
Of limited visibility
Thickened air
And the pregnant
Odors captured in foggy droplets
That wolves and hunters know
Air warmer than the earth
Cats mewling
As we are mewling
In darkened bedrooms
Resentment, regret, and sorrow
All now like snow on the ground
Hidden in the wondrous fog
Poetry
Dr. Renik I Presume
November 21, 2012
I am mostly baffled at what fuels my desire for a rendezvous with, Owen Renik, a H.S. classmate I haven’t seen in 54 years, and who I honestly don’t recall having had one conversation with, ever, or indeed even a shared activity, ever, altho I was surely aware of his existence, viewed him as of a different class, almost waspy, and a competitor. He was not from my neighborhood, i didn’t “hang out” with him, and I knew nothing about him other than what he looked like and what I projected onto him, which at that age I expect I saw as somehow “known” by me. And although I would proclaim I am not that attached or attracted to most of my high school experiences, nor to my high school cohorts, the fact is I have gone to the 10th, 20th, 30th and 50th class reunions. Dr. Renik has not, and I did not ask him why, although my guess/projection is that his h.s. experiences and mates are of little to no interest to him. And I “imagine” I get it.
Nonetheless, I am interested in meeting him, and in attaching a real person to his name and face, and I have worked on making it happen over email for about a year, telling him of my interest in meeting him and how I’m often out in San Francisco, and him suggesting that when I was next out here to let him know and he would put some time aside for me.
Here’s what I knew about Owen Renik before our rendezvous … nothing. Here’s what I “know” after our rendezvous at a very lovely lounge/bar in the neighborhood of his office around Sutter St in SF.
He is currently a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society. He was editor and chief of the “Psychoanalytic Quarterly” for a decade and Director of Training/Associate Chief of the Mt. Zion Hospital Department of Psychiatry. More than that he is the father of two girls/women, one a pediatrician in S.F. and the other a geologist, living in Texas, where Owen’s current woman/partner is. Neither have children and although he recognizes it would be a lovely experience to have, he is not attached to the notion that if it doesn’t happen he will suffer. Indeed, although I understand there were times in Owen’s life when he did suffer, and was confused, his overall experience of his life is that he was/is a remarkably fortunate man who lived a nice life. And on this one occasion of our meeting I found him to be as lovely a man as you are likely to meet. Fit. Trim. Nice haircut. T shirt and sport jacket. Works out. Girlfriend in Texas. Daughter in Texas. Other daughter pediatrician.
What The Stones Say
We stones don’t speak very loudly
Start there.
And although we can yelp and scrape
And bang into one another as well and as loudly as most matter you’d know of
The fact is that stones are mostly quiet
Introverted some would say
Not like creatures with their mouths open and life cycles measured in milliseconds
No, we go back before the stone age, waaay back,
Part of the molten age
After the gas age
When all was one blended brand
Before the Great Differentiation
Before air, before water.
Before I was whole
Before I was broke
Mostly quiet
Often wet
Rolling a lot and for a long time
And getting better at it
On a beach somewhere
Recently deposited
After many long journeys
Well rounded
Attuned
Mobile
Maybe even curious by now
Aware of the heat of the sun
And the cool of the night
The soft of the sand
And the soft of the hand
That lifts me
And numbers of my kin
And brings us to something called home
And arranges us he says
In some design he says
That is absolutely unintelligible to us.
But it is nice to be resting again
And I seem to be in contact with other stones
Who also came home with me
From the beach.
I like change
And I like rest.
And just bein’ a stone is alright with me.
Poetry