*
We Lay Stone
to lay Memory
keep our thoughts
Focused
In One Place
*
by placing one Stone
upon another
We fashion Order
from our inconsistencies
*
by fitting one stone
next to another
we generate Sense
to our Incongruous
Dealings
*
Build a Sequence from Chaos
*
Assemble Continuity
to our Story
*
We Are Stone layers
*
*
Do you ever Wonder
If I were to die Now
would I die stupid?
or
has my life been full
of giving a hand
listening to broken
hearts, the keening
of Geese, interspersed
with picking my nose
sharing my food, my drink
heeding the Call of Destiny?
*
Did I Stand enough?
Balance those moments
when cowering, I Sat?
*
Do you ever Wonder
who would I be Now
were I to die hit by a car
instantaneously?
*
what have you done
for Yourself, Others
the Earth?
*
You realize too
once the few
who know you Pass
no memory of your Time
Here remains
*
Do you ever wonder
Have I been my own Messiah?
*
Art Work by Yaron Rosner
Für Meine Christina
Pour Papa
*
Photograph by Yaron Rosner
*
what were you thinking
as you repeatedly crawled
into Gunfire?
reaching for your Fallen
comrades
heaving them onto stretchers
all the while hugging
the Earth
Oblivious to explosions
impervious to Bullet Rain
*
was it youthful conviction
in immortality
or teeth gritting defiance
of Death?
*
Your gathered Freedom Fighters
pushed onwards
heartened by an enemy
retreating
seeing a glow
in what appeared
At Last
the Darkest Tunnel’s End
*
cleaning and dressing wounds
relieving Pain
where you could
carrying Them
desperately
close to your heart
as they took a last Breath
holding their hands
an Angel to the fevered
*
So many Fell
you survived
a Keeper of the Story
*
Those were Thunderous Times
Returning
to the small things
of ordinary life
awoke Torment
subdued by action
pursued you into the Everyday
Until
refusing to buckle
you Succumbed
*
the voices, so many
so vociferous,
so demanding
you became Two
like Wolves
they fought for your heart
in the end
only the one you fed
could win
*
You Say
you don’t belong
here anymore
*
weary of a world
changing so fast
your Spirit
flails
in the loneliness
of your words
*
I pause
*
the Origin of my life,
I never imagined
you Elsewhere
than part of it
Now
unwelcome
and inevitable
the notion of your absence
prods me
*
I see
a Dimming
momentary
for the planet
but Permanent in
my chambers,
the ones built
with Your Blood
*
My mother, Marilyn Cashman Nahas is 83
Very lucky to still have her in my life.
*
You Returned
from the Dead,
as did Lazarus,
the continuation
into your New Life
a Resurgence
from Deepest Darkness
*
You carry Now
profound insight
into Our Humanity,
as revealed by the modulated
Spring in your Step
the Smile,
the ardent generosity
and more importantly
the Absence of Sadness
*
Art Work by Yaron Rosner
To My Uncle Ty
*
To my Father who Honored this Day with Fervor
*
*
Soaked in the Loss of 8 Million
Dead, Wasted and Mutilated
You Grew
Honoring them Religiously
Every November
the Sound of church Bells
Bugles
A Command to Memory
year after year
the struggle for freedom
its Maintenance
*
Vigilantly you moved ahead
Marked with the Impermanence
of your generation
it was shock
not surprise
When It Happened All Over Again
*
You engaged yourself
as you knew They had,
the Millions who Fought
for your Freedom,
you Honored them
by never giving up
and Fighting for Ours
*
Scatter me
you said
to the Four Winds
that I might fly
at last
deepest wish
and strongest fear
you said
that I may mingle
in laughter, tears
words of truth
and foolishness
you said
that I might visit
close and far
wide and near
simultaneously
with different particles
of my Self
you said
that in Death
I be what I was in Life
a lingering Flame
at once important
and
insignificant
Art Work By Yaron Rosner
Winter has numbed us in ice,
faced with mounting crystals
your presence retreats
I turn in circles
books unopened, pens untouched
the day runs by, meals made,
a night, another day,
I turn in circles
feeling you wane
as if your breath were fainter
your body more transparent
preparing your soul
to lift from its bones
home for 88 years
I turn in circles
From armor to onion skin
a warrior’s challenge
to go in peace
without fanfare, artifice
or gun powder
rather a slow fading of the edges
a pacifying of the will
a softening of your ardor
now saved for me, only
and in the wake of your silent withdrawal,
you leave an emptiness I apprehend
and I turn in circles
To my father, 4 years before you passed
****
Nails hammered to leather soles
striking the Cobblestone
Screaming in the Wooden silence
of those Black and Silver days
I heard them Go
Such a Tuning Fork, that resonance
is the Background of my life
the Tapestry of Noise against which
all else Echoes
Muttering incessantly I cannot die
hold on, lest the Memory fade
in the race to Forget
I am the Wave Length of those buildings
that are no longer
I am a Frequency to those who come
revisit the places of horror
we dare not Ignore
I resonate Relentless, such ghost pains
for those who will listen, remember
and Keep Living
For those who deny, won’t hear
I drive them to Tone Madness
I, I am Sound Memory.
Art Work by Yaron Rosner
To the Inhabitants of the Great North American East
In the Bleak, see acrimonious,
terrain of March,
(a March still frozen, encrusted
with swathes of rancid snow)
there is no Promise
no hope, just desolation,
what appears a permanent
Wasteland
shows no signs
of its Gestating depths
of the buried Life
deep at work,
unalterably,
renewing itself
Sap Rising
that mounting Force
Strong As Life Is Strong
Indomitable as it is,
mirrors our Wonder
at seeing it burst
forth, when desperate
and wasted,
we least expect it
Photograph by Pattie Schaefer