Sometimes
stretching forever
to the never-caught curve
at the rim of the universe
Then, telescoping to
femto-second flickers,
eons, mere blinks
of an owl's eye
Changing
chameleon-like
with the color
of our days
time is not held
within the electron flux
of a quartz clock,
imprisoned in the swing
of a pendulum
or locked
in the languorous tolling
of the sunday steeple
time does not run parallel
Mutable measure
of our circumscribed sojourn
in this continuum
Now swift, now slow
eventually,
for us,
ended
A femto-second is a millionth -millionth of a second
You lie beside me quietly turning the pages of your book in vain I seek to read between your lines interpreting your breaths in the silence between us slowly, you turn each page our love spins by idly as on a reel-to-reel tape you close your book, put out the light Is it past midnight?
I was the youngest kid in the Yard They said "Betcha. ..can't make a Big Bang" I did By Golly- Then there was Light and all the rest of it Galaxies, Stars even a Black Hole or two Well, billions of them but who's counting? Then there was all this stuff called Evolution Before I knew it I had this Universe on My hands Thank goodness it's vacation time But, you know, I wish now I hadn't banged that Bang
History is .
i
passion made public
our days
dust of history's cloud
inconspicuous specks
in the eye
of the beholder
ii
a receding wake
astern
the turbulent waters
give no clue
of our craft's
destination
iii
a play writ large
cast of thousands
on a rotating stage
plot most confused
without promise
of a happy end
iv
a flickering screen
with sound and color
turned way up
it is not obvious
who switched on the set
or why He chose
this channel
How many ways to count the stars in their galaxies flung across eighteen billion light-years since it all began? Just when were the Laws of Physics first posted? who read them then to stir the brew primordial? O grant us a sable understanding the missing nine tenths of what we were given when all was energy before the comets spun off their silken trails and suns swept up their planets and the green grass grew not anywhere in a billion galaxies Scientists have posited recently that dark energy makes up about 75% of the Universe, dark matter about 21%, and visible matter only about 4%
What I need is a literary hammer something to beat and shape these recalcitrant words into meaning that will endure A chisel would also be useful to pare away the ambiguities the equivocal varnish off the half-said, the intended, but not quite... Language is an awesome thing but often it is the unspoken word or the blank page that means the most when all is said and done. That is the reason why this is a love poem with no words
All the photos are black and white slightly out of focus and curling at the edges Looking at those sepia snaps of other lives affixed on pages yellowing with the years suddenly I comprehend It is my life now that is curling at the edges
Herewith a phrase or two exploding you o bladder of pomposity, filled with fatuity swollen, smirking sack balloon of bloated bombast, caricature of self-esteem May my words be as sharp shears clipping off the wool you've spun over the eyes of your bemused beholders.
Dragonfly Dragonfly hovers shimmering evanescence flashes, and is gone Thorns Thorns in late autumn casting sharp gothic shadows on a dust-brown path Storks My heart is happy for today's sky is filled storks northward flying
The day sits brooding under a bare stone hill summer parched expectant for rain time slows a pace a breeze floats by birds at their vespers pray over fields and patient woods elsewhere in the news-real-world events happen: terror, floods elections, football mayhem and madness all is flux day to day here, I listen to the sky and take comfort in the falling of a leaf
Storks circling with the thermals rising on a blue sky wings outstretched spanning the seasons as this Spring slips gently into Summer wild oats wave between purple thistles poppies nod and shed red petals, lupines glow sapphire beyond the lawn the kibbutz dogs run sensing a dry season behind the bushes green fades to brown imperceptibly spreading over the hollyhock hills
Crocodile Log like in the swamps of memory Wrapped in miasmic mists Fearsome creature of inchoate fantasies Omnivore, carnivore And ever-so-much more Krokodil You who blithely Swallowed the sun And left a generation Of Soviet children In the dark 'till rescued by the Bear Croc Nursery pea-green pet Red of tongue And multi toothed Chewed up playmate Of many daughters And puppy dogs Ah sweet crocodile How I love your Oh so many Incarnations.
i
last retreat
of lovers,
erstwhile poets,
charlatans,
the perplexed
and the truly wise
of this world
who knowing speech
are speechless
is the end of wisdom
silence?
ii
let me sense
the texture
of your silence
as the shifting moon
passes offstage
and heaven leads on
to midnight
let my fingertips
touch
the stillness
around us
adrift
after many voyages
I seek safe harbor
on your silent island
at dusk a stork speckled sky storks are flying to the northlands as their generations have taught them they are flying to the northlands where hope and old nests await light fades as silk to evening smooth sleek gliders homing to the darkling woods where secrets sleep with the storks.
I am the imposter within the poet imposing on your innermost tweaking at your heartstrings in the heat of summer grinning to see how you react to my perceived oh-so-serious façade a malevolent imp making free with others' emotions positing good faith laughing behind the bushes crying to myself when evening falls.
They don't make suitcases like that any more. Time was, when voyage meant train, steamship distances unbridgeable waiting for a thinning mail weeks, then months, then nothing Time was, when this case was made solid, leather, heavy stitching with protective edges at the corners. Children's train, across the Reich stops and starts again... Holland a lighted gangplank, night ferry to gray-misted sea-gulled Harwich again the rails reaching flat across East Anglia, to London in my bedroom the suitcase, a silent witness with two labels "Masaryk Station, Praha" "Royal Scot, London-Glasgow" Leather suitcase from a far-off country, Czechoslovakia, containing all the love parents could pack for a five year old off on a journey for life. *From the end of 1938 until the outbreak of War in Sept. 1939, about 10,000, mostly Jewish children (unaccompanied by parents or adults) were brought from Nazi-controlled Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain under the Kindertransport scheme. But for the Kindertransport, few, if any, of these would have survived the War.
The wind is whirling the gulls over a white-capped sea here, where Pacific ends On our westward way we seek by this wild coast what we know not yet Only the echoing cry of the circling gulls, red-tipped beaks glassy-eyed uncaring if they know, or know not, what message is borne on the wind's gusts or rolls ashore on the breaking waves carried five thousand sea miles by an ocean pulse The wind is chill We clamber back into the calm cabin of our vehicle, head south Perhaps, tomorrow, we may be wiser than the gulls.
Tom Berman :I have been a member of Kibbutz Amiad in the Upper Galilee, Israel for over 50 years. I am a scientist (aquatic microbiology) and most of my research has been focused on the Sea of Galilee (known here as Lake Kinneret). I grew up and attended school in Glasgow, Scotland having arrived there aged 5 from Czechoslovakia with the Kindertransport in 1939. Further education was in the U.S. at Rutgers University and at M.I.T. I am married with one wife, three daughters, six granddaughters, a grandson and two mongrel dogs. Most of my publications to date have been scientific but now and again I have had a poem appear in press (Ariel, Voices Israel, Full Circle, Voices from Israel, Travelling, Across the Long Bridge, The World Poets Quarterly) or on the Web (Poetry Webring Review, Poetry Life & Times, Ariga, Poeticdiversity, Poetry Super Highway, SubtleTea, The Coffee Press Journal, Lily, Poetrysuperhighway, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, Illiterate Hooligan, The Poetry Victims and elsewhere). Amazon.com are still trying to dispose of my first book of poems (Shards, a Handful of Verse). I have just completed a 3-year stint as Editor in Chief of the annual Voices Israel Anthology.
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