From here on in
the lesson gets harder,
loss more bittersweet
than gain less fulfilling
but still high stakes
and so worth playing
I’m living, I’m doubling
down from here on in.
Chagall 2015
Tag Archive: hope
What I thought were low patches of clear sky
were really high scatters of clouds.
Chagall 2015
babushka ladies, coarse and woolen coats,
plastic covers adorn divans and settees
in quiet parlors, front rooms in railroad
ghetto apartments
people to the left of me,
to the right of me, above and below,
whispers through the closets I hear
encounters that threaten danger in muffles
intended for someone else not me thank God
this time.
And Rivera still flies his pigeons
against bluest skies, a Latino silhouette
with arms extended like a holy man gives flight
to his flock over tenements and heartbreak,
the hope of generations, dormant and receding.
© Chagall 2015
I was once
a bird in flight
I remember
batting my wings
wildly to stay aloft,
the hard click
of our beaks,
the warm nest,
songs for no reason,
the promise of sky.
© Chagall 2015
I hope you love
the life you have,
in fact I even pray
that you have everything
you’d ever want, may you never want.
© Chagall 2015
She said she’d return as a small light,
one I would see should sadness surround me.
No need to search, just open your heart
I’ll guide you out of the dark
© Chagall 2015
I remember now – once as a child
I had devised a way to forget.
Did I really spring from that?
© Chagall 2015
She’s on a stage with the world on her arm,
a tiny warm whisper in spring, always so far away,
high in the pine on the outskirts of mind where night falls
merely once a day I would find her atop low points,
arms outstretched perhaps breaking her fall – I’d never break her fall,
I’d never ask why only. It’s an effect she had on others,
this effect she had on me, precise – so fluently bewitched,
maybe a little bit bothered by the largesse of charms
I’d heard her recite at least one time, had felt so blessed,
so suddenly whole, too alive to hope to survive anything but liftoff,
everything riding on time, yet so irretrievably late.
© Chagall 2015
Destined to languish atop dead trees,
instead her lost bird sings.
© Chagall 2015: This poem was inspired by http://evapoetex.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/canary-spirit-poem/
Mopping up sprinkles on fingertips, the end of the party,
round sweet remnants, in so many colors, matched the balloons
that bobbed overhead, and I upside down on my bed
pretended to walk on the ceiling.
© Chagall 2015
Alphabet City 