USA

BLefcowitz@aol.com 

Poets' Time

Though we live like everyone else

in standard time zones,

that's only to keep the evil eye averted

or to make a flight on time

for it's hard to leap across

a plane's rising curve after take-off

and buckle your seat-belt as well.


Sometimes we live in Chinese Moonlight Savings

Time, Ripening Plum Time, Blue Tango Time.

Often all at once. Jet lag never bothers us

because we're always crossing zones,

one chain of brain cells in the Safeway

buying bread, the strands of another 

spread on a beach near Venice along with

the fishermen's nets, yet others looped

in figure 8's on a fjord we thought we had forgotten. . .


When we're told to push the clocks ahead or back

we obey like anyone else, if only because

we might be late for the poem, its syllables

wandering off on their own

to search for someone to connect them.

Or so early

that when the poem fails to show

we leave without a crumb to feed it, the poem

arriving an hour later, hungry and unclaimed 

on a city sidewalk to which we keep returning

with our brooms, like those old Russian women

who sweep the streets for scraps of meat, search

for the glint of a diamond that fell

from a rich woman's brooch many centuries ago.

Addiction

Once having craved

only nicotine & love

I've become so addicted to rain

that I store it in locked barrels, never

question its purity or source.

When forced to replenish my stock

I gladly risk lightning & chill, 

contamination with acid, toxins

from far- distant clouds

that can turn my rain puce, royal blue.

If I could pull it down

string after string from the sky

I'd weave the rain so it fit like a slicker,

my second skin, my private band

with a repertoire from Reggae to Bach,

my gardener, my welcome guest, 

the beach-comber that makes certain

my shores' most frail reeds flourish.

The Plums

Left to lie in the sun

too long past their ripeness

plums on the windowsill 

explode with my fingers'

most delicate touch

leave dark crimson trails

that stick to my skin, fill

the pumice-cut grooves 

& seep through, no matter 

how I try to protect each pore 

from the Florida sun, the old

men & women lying on beach-

chairs, bodies featureless as film

that's been over-exposed.

Inquest

Experts agree that last week's sudden death

of a massive black oak tree on the California coast

was neither a suicide nor the result of supernatural

mischief, despite claims of survivors, including

numerous acorns, leaves, tables, barrels.

Though witnesses swear they saw the ancient oak

turn a vivid red just prior to its collapse, 

suspicions of a fungal attack or a link

to recent deaths of nearby ponds & lakes

have been dismissed by experts as "just more

hysteria from those commie-greens."

The tree simply died, "like cells & stars die

every minute of every day," a spokesman added,

& it was "crazy to blame such a death

on a conspiracy of Wall Street & Right Wing

oil tycoons" or to fear the tree's death

might presage a pandemic of similar events.

Services at noon. 

Interment private. 

Please omit flowers.

© All Copyright, 2000, Barbara F. Lefcowitz.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.