Building the Bais HaMikdash

        
       July 17, '13


                          Building the Bais HaMikdash

      I found today the brand of marmalade I sought -
      The avocado cream I wanted,
      The perfect little towel I had vainly hunted,
      And thanked HaShem for finding me the things I bought.
      Lest you think nothing could add to a felicitous day -
      In a neighborhood where I had rarely been,
      I saw the tallest date-palm I had ever seen -
      Higher than high buildings it held sway.
      Thanks and praise in one day was sufficient,
      But would not have been complete
      Without giving a coin to someone in the street:
      Pleasure in my new things was not deficient.
      Small by small we bring redemption, with our knowledge
                                                              or without it -
      The Rambam himself tells us not to doubt it.
     

Expecting the Unexpected

                    

    July 10, '13

                              Expecting the Unexpected


     Ever since assigned to write
     On a boon least expected,
     Daily I await something unexpected -
     A gift out of nowhere - a message of light.
     But a fact it is wrongheaded not to face -
     Is that hourly expecting an event
     Is sure guarantee it will not take place -
     Something at all costs I want to prevent.
     So I stopped awaiting a gratuitous gift -
     And I did it without delay -
     Glad I made of my folly short shrift -
     Since nothing was at my door next morning but the day.
     Un-do the Deceiver who obscures the truth with stealth!
     Slay it! Slay it! - the greatest boon is Life itself.

                            

         June 26, '13

                                       'What If ' I Refuse...

       I think you thought I would reject the topic -
      Well I might -  well I might -
      But if inclined to the philosophic,
      I would say providence gave me an opening to write.
      I sought after class and the city's noise,
      The hushed quiet of a library -
      There I sat an hour immersed in poetry -
      Seeing mountains and  the windhover's exquisite poise.
      What if you could bodily enter the place a poem conveys -
      Be in Frost's woods on a snowy evening,
      Or in the garden at Amherst on a summer's day -
      Would your inner self be transformed on leaving?
      A poem is a breathtaking event in language -
                                               not the limning of a place -
      Besides  -  where your mind is  -   is where
                                               you actually are in space.

A Consuming Occupation

June 19, '13

                          A Consuming Occupation

    Happy my years of teaching though passing few -
    Ever since I watched my fourth grade teacher stand
    And take the desk keys in her beautiful chalk- dusted hand,
    I have known what I wanted to do.
    But the past has claimed my teaching of the young -
    Newer things beckon ahead in the sun -
    Occupations may differ but all are life's summits,
    At my current peak, you can find me writing sonnets.
    What if I could combine poetry and writing,
    With teaching to a group of peers -
    Call it "a literary summit - hands on - exciting",
    Where choice of work and pleasure adheres?
    Recall Frost who wanted to make his avocation
                                       and vocation one -
    Earth and heaven benefit only when work is
                                       passionately done.
                                      
                                             
                                                     

Color Me No Color

      June 12, '13   
        
                     Color Me No Color

   "I will raise aloft the milk-white rose" -
   I didn't write that but the Poet everyone knows -
   That is why I sit like a fractious little scholar,
   Stubbornly refusing to write about color.
   "My luv is like a red red rose" penned the Scotish bard.
   Why was he the first and last to write it?
   Time's anthologies find perennial delight in it -
   Could such an unadorned utterance have been so hard?
   Genius is a simple thing when all is said -
   It cannot be understood or explained.
   It takes hold of color and lifts it above the mundane -
   White is whiter through its craft - redder red.
   Ask me to write on flowers, I'll take my stand -
   But 'color' alone! - this little poet sits with folded hands.

No Problem - No solution

             June 5, '13

                             No Problem - No Solution

   It's a real dilemma finding a resolution
   To the problem given as an assignment -
   To wit:  'finding a solution'.
   You could call it non-poetic alignment.
   If you scanned all of Shakespeare to Emerson's time,
   (Fairly most poets in the medium),
   I doubt you'd find 'solution' even for the rhyme -
   The word is a non-conductor - too plebian.
   Such words belong to widely different genres -
   Mathematics or behavioral psychology,
   Disciplines not given to subtle entendre.
   If anywhere in verse, perhaps a neo-modern anthology.
   Far be it for me to dismiss ideas out of hand -
   'Solution' might figure in a poem - it just wouldn't be grand.
  
  

                    May 29. '13

                           Sonnet On Line

          To take off with any word through time
          Challenges the sonnet beyond capacity -
          It cannot hold a train of thought and memory -
          How much more if one considers the word 'line'.
          For a line in reality is infinite -
          Even though, like light or a circle, it bends.
          Whereas "hold that line" is a mark most definite,
          An ideal line is something that never ends.
          The 'line' is turning out a long discovery -
          I can take it to the beginning of all things created,
          And show how everything is inter-related;
          A line is essential for the past's recovery.
          The sonnet is limited on detail and fact -
          But for fourteen lines it does 'pretty good' for the abstract.

U.S.A.

            
      May 29, '13

                                U.S.A.

     I wish to make it clear from the start -
     Jerusalem is my spiritual city of birth -
     I love its stones - I love its earth,
     But I have a dual-citizen heart.
     United States of the great American way -
     You have always had your defamers,
     But I was born in Phila. - city of the Framers,
     And I'm proud to be "made in the USA".
     U - endowed by the Creator with life and liberty -
     S - say can you see the stars and stripes -
     A - land of faultlines yet brave and free -
     U.S. of the Constitution and Bill of  Rights.
     Simple would it be if I was a citizen of one nation,
     But the heart if a gracious land, looking kindly
                                                         on annexation.
                                                       

                                April 24, '13
                        Unseasonable Weather

              When I consider my inner weather -
              How I can ride a string of sunny days -
              And from nowhere grey clouds obscure my skies -
              I say:  weather is nothing if not a metaphor.
              What's the meaning in an April so unseasonable?
              I, for one, don't mind winter months in spring.
              Roses are no worse off for the cold and rain -
              That doesn't make it less unreasonable.
              People say it's a spiritual maelstrom -
              Cosmic forces affecting the oceanic.
              Incidents abound of hurricanes and hailstorms -
              The talk tends to be messianic.
              It's safe to say that outer turmoil and reversal
              Are a metaphor for the inner - and vice versal.
         

         May 22, '13     

                                 Standing at the Mountain

        I'm standing in my stroller seven months old
        On the boardwalk of Atlantic City -
        Small and timeless I am, as I hold the handlebars
        And look at the world with an infant's pure simplicity.
        I think we stood at Sinai in such a stance -
        (Newborn nation - nation of newborns) -
        G-d restored us to our primal innocence,
        And with fatherly love called us His firstborn.
        Nothing has ever changed that fact -
        Though twice exiled from our land,
        Our core-essence remains intact:
        The nation who said: We will do and then understand.
        We're told full restoration of our souls is in reach -
        So I keep hold - deep within, waiting to be redeemed,
                                                is the baby on the beach.

                    

   May 8, ,13



                                   Fear Only One

        Nothing in school scared me more than math -
        Multiplication was a monster I could tame -
        I knew its tables and charts by name -
        Fractions were the numerical nightmare in my path.
        Then came problems - (if Frank has three and John nine) -
        On my terrifying list ranked a close second -
        The very sight of them froze my ability to reckon -
        My arrested skill never unfroze with time.
        So great was my fear of a failing grade -
        Once, when teacher went out for a quick meeting,
        I left my seat and asked a friend for aid -
        The closest I ever came to cheating.
        Oh little scholar who dreaded math -
        Subtract all your fears and leave only one:
                           the fear of divine wrath.

                      May 1, '13

                               L'ag B'Omer - Beauty Within Beauty

            
                 I always thought a single rose,
                 White or red - in a fluted vase
                 Was the height of beauty.  One never knows -
                 It turns out two or more colors is what stays.
                 Viewed in a homiletic way,
                 Qualities that are compounds and blends
                 Relate one to another - interplay.
                 Admixture of color towards harmony tends.
                 Even in the actual flower that grows -
                 I have to stand as one corrected -
                 I saw how loveliness was perfected
                 In the slight-pink petals of the all-white rose.
                 Beauty - unlike the single red flower - is not exclusive,
                 But like the heavenly spheres distinct but inter-inclusive.

             

          April 17, '13                      

                                    Independence Day - 5773

I watched the Jewish boy walk the line of traffic
Selling blue and white flags - he walked against the wind
Putting them in his bag like arrows in their quivers.
He did his job as if it was easy - not a hard endeavor.
And today I saw the air show over Jerusalem's market -
Four planes like metal copies of the paper ones boys sail
Soared in close 'V' formations -
Scoring the sky with loud sonic racket.
'Proud moments,' some say, 'but there's a snag -
From a peace that's lasting we're still really far.'
'Not so - when you reach out your hand to buy a flag -
This very day you could hear the great shofar.'
And stock reply though it be, may 5773
Usher in Israel's ultimate victory.

      

                      March 31, '13


                 On Being Assigned to Write About Preparing              



        I find myself unprepared to write about 'preparing' -
        It's too much the commonplace norm.
        Poetry's disdain is unsparing -
        What have chores to do with the sonnet form!
        No sooner gets uttered so flat a denial -
        A fact appears like an illumination:
        It took nearly a thousand years of thought preparation
        For G-d to make the world a place that is viable!
        Now there's a paradigm without parallel,
        Whereby all mundane acts of preparing
        Become both necessary and invaluable.
        Woe to my mistake so glaring!
        The point is to take life's dull metal proper,
        And small-hammer it into brightest copper.