Opal
Come to the surface,
O dear stone, the time
to appreciate each other
is nearly over.
art
The Winter Show Postponed By COVID-19
Due to the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in New York City and transmissibility of the Omicron variant, the Board of Managers of East Side House Settlement — the owner and beneficiary of The Winter Show — made the decision to postpone the 2022 edition of The Winter Show, originally scheduled for January 20th through 30th, 2022.
New dates and details for The Winter Show 2022 are expected to be shared in the coming weeks. [Read more…] about The Winter Show Postponed By COVID-19
Poetry: For an Armistice
For an Armistice
Alone in your pup tent with one evasive mosquito
whose presence ramifies with each new fly-by
sounding like Kawasaki cycles winding out
until this bug looms as large as Gertrude Stein
on steroids at the Expatriate Olympics in Paris.
Your choices now are to get out of your sleeping
bag to find your flashlight, track the ‘skeeter down
then swat it dead or lie awake for an all-nighter
longer than our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Poetry: Barn’s Burned Down
Barn’s Burned Down
Now I see the moon,
in this burning heap of cinder block and timber,
this cataclysm, this crush,
this dense mass of silent consciousness,
I see you, my beloved, your wide
deep sapphire eyes.
The period we have to appreciate
each other is nearly over.
Poetry: Transmigration
Transmigration
When we rediscover the way to shed
our bodies, to become exoskeleton,
molten from the nymph stage, reborn,
boundless in reality, radiant, aflame,
differences are just words,
the arrow and the aim become one.
Poetry: Son of Man
Son of Man
I am the one
who does not flinch
at the thought of
being eaten alive
with nowhere to hide
like the cry of a
whale dying on the
other side of the world
Poetry: Samsara
Samsara
Bestowing only
impressions of sorrow,
in the butter soft leather light
of new fog,
a royal procession of swans
announce themselves.
Birth and death.
Nothing is attached for long.
Poetry: Red Bathrobe
Red Bathrobe
Our mother Alice liked to get up early,
brew her coffee, then await its boost
in morning’s solitude on our cabin porch,
wearing PJs and her red terrycloth robe.
Alone with Crane Mountain’s stolid monolith
as she nursed such solitude once,
three humming birds hovered about
this unrelentingly red floral display her robe
supposed. The hummers buzzed her wide awake
as no coffee could — a startlement to embed
its three beaks deep into our cabin lore.
Poetry: A Separation
A Separation
Peering into
the shoe polish black
emptiness of stars,
from the last plank
of an old seaside dock, the man
never felt so alone and so sure.
Having learned at last
what it means to be comfortable
on a lazy Sunday afternoon,
the ocean is restless.
Poetry: Noah Banks on a Voice
Noah Banks on a Voice
…that the nations might tremble at thy presence
As we ourselves seem soon to be set upon
by rising oceans and all manner of aberrant
weathers, why, Frederick Buechner asks,
do we treat the Biblical tale of Noah’s flood
mostly as a children’s story? Is this the sole
place this harsh tale can finds traction now
despite current crises of coastal flooding?
Has formerly unthinkable horror become
just another fantasy domain of young minds?
Might we not better see Noah’s flood tale
as prophetic, in all the richness of that term,
“a tale of God’s terrible despair” of humans,
such that God would destroy us all but one
old man, like an ad-framed tv melodrama?
Noah’s Ark a toy with removable roof now,
so you can let the animals out during dinner.
Noah seemed the fool for the longest time,
even as he trekked toward the lumber yard.