Safe with Giora Romm

Are we just flies in winds of terror? No.

To be scattered like flying feathers? No.

You’ve read of stabbings on our streets? No.

You know they want the Jews to feel unhomed? No.

We’ve endured long between the lion’s bare teeth. No more.

Blood libel killed Bessarabian Jews. No more.

We’ve been brained and bloodied at heaven’s gate. No more.

We will not cower in sanctuaries of shame.

Ben Ami saw that salvation lies in strong arms. Yes.

We fling our fists in flights of steel, inscribe the sky

With the figure eight of our ace Giora Romm
above shimmering clouds silvering toward the moon.

Know: Our dead are never vainly dead without cause.
See the window lights shining like ripe golden wheat.
See the bride of Shabbat walk with her candle - safe.
See the land of Israel  blossoming like a rose.

Key

He had the key but not the lock to turn it in;

The bronze relic was a metaphor that opened

The lost alleyways of his Ashkenazic past.

As the mists of time bubbled raindrops on its skin,

It slipped free from the grip of ghetto memory.

When his mother, faithful treasurer, held it out,

He stretched out his hand and took it to his keeping.

She measured walks with a mind-map of courtyard locks.

She’d seen the letters take leave from the burning scroll,

Souls flying into the air, indestructible;

Her baby flung aside, black poison on his lips;

God summoning himself to grieve in a sackcloth.

The aleph stayed silent while the Germans murdered.

No temple plaque is vast enough to remember

Each murdered Jew, no high stone wall is long enough

To list their names, or their hope for regeneration.

Still

Once she brought herself,

gave herself to him.

He brought and gave himself

to her in love.

They sacrificed,

for love.

Beyond the violet rocks

bluish-purple bell-shaped waves 

blossomed on the beach.

The grapes on the vine 

smelled of ice-blue sea salt.

On this seamoaning slope 

the tipping cup of sun 

lipped amber from the gold. 

Thirsting for a slow sip 

of shimmering honey wine,

their souls slowed the seconds down.

Now they hide their faces

from each other.

They are exiles.

Their love is now

reduced to carbon black,

a burnt offering.

The altar they made

sheds icy tears

on their burning souls.

They missed the silent calls
the heart makes 
from the edge of the universe.
Still.

Love remembers

All flesh is grass.

So too is reason, passion and memory.

Poems and songs are like bright flowers that bloom in the field.

Grass withers.

Flowers fade when the chill of time blows upon them.

A wind passes by and they are no more.

The Tanakh tells us that steadfast love endures.

Even when the grass grows over the field of loss,

Love remembers,
From eternity to eternity.

Putin - Only because he can

His clenched fist murders for the motherland;

In Aleppo Stalin squared strides from street to street,

Bringing horror to home and hospital,

Spilling schoolchildren’s blood into inkwells;

From his hawk’s beak the missiles strike,

Driving children into the street for the double-tap;

From Syrian children’s bones he builds his czar-nest;

His assassin’s smirk is like a Siberian winter;

His grinning face sits like a century of slaughter;

He is willing to pay any price for feeling big;

He steals the scent from the fresh flowers on the graves.

Truth's crop

I roll up a boulder

to make a high window

to see the flat plains.

A sparrow who wonders

what I’m doing there

gives me a lash of pity.

I see the symbols flash

blading truth’s crop

into a lake of red.

The snow falls in sheaves

to hide the human whet

for harvest blood.

The earth stops stockstill
held in thrall
by deathly horror.

Hopping like a wren

The smell of daffodils

a mile away

makes me drunk.

The crunch of gravel

to the faraway temple

comforts me.

The sight of a crane

on a stick-like leg

stops time for me.

The tail twist of a trout

trapped in a frozen stream

maddens me.

Hopping like a wren

in the eaves of verse

gives me wings.

Draught Horse

The smoking thrown-away butt
stared up from the flagstone;

The tip of a fresh smoke
arc-winked in his pursed-grin mouth.

He cough-clucked the muscular
draught horse into the yard.
The sharp stings of suspended smoke
scraped his hooded eyes.

Then feathered fetlocks clouted
long strides across the furrowed meadow,

As though pursued by slavering
snarling Ardennes wolves.

Who tasted oozing raw-blood
meat on their wild-bud tongues.

His breathless passion beyond
the load limits of words,

He rode the rhythm
of the roan horse’s rise and fall.

In crude consonants
I cocooned the vowels of my awe.