Fall in Cape Cod
—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Denise Flanigan
—Photos by Denise Flanigan
AN EARTH CHILD
Floating on suspecting
clouds, wind, warmth
covering the green sea
in your bare feet
over animated pine combs
and listened to shore voices
who linger at the ocean edge
among the gulls on dunes
my memory drifts
detouring by a rock garden
as you tiptoe this Fall
on what faces you
as another earth child
steps and glows on leaves
red, yellow and orange
in the first sunlight
on echoes of morning
of a clear geography
between hedges
the aspen grackles come closer
here ocean bird voices
color your presence
able to speak and draw
a line on the sandy beach
being a part of art
and attached to nature
on a jog in miles of landscape
before the threshold
of sensitized words
accessible to all
who will feel our language
embracing a transformed season
into an infinite profile
as laughing river run waves to us.
___________________
ORANGE
Now burnt orange
in the yellow sun
light of Mondrian's
disconnected discovery
of chilled lines
as we follow
shadow's shade in orange
escapes fiery paints
combined in echo
footsteps by a canvas
against a wall
of sketching landscapes.
EARTHBOUND
Engulfed by the newly built boat
as the morning's first passerby
enters and is photographed
by the tall sun
with my initials inscribed
on the wooden oars
a former student and singer
now living in Palo Alto
rests against the bow
greets me as a ghostly poet
in a safe cabin haven
as the ship turns in the sea
starts to quote
from a landscape poem
of mine I read at her graduation
illuminates our morning
and gives me hope
of language reliving in others.
___________________
PREDICTABLE
Predictable
as cards, stars,
a gurgling from the crib
with a mirror's impression
apple and honey
at table,
outside dawn arrives
on the dark blue shore wave
sea bird wings sky borne,
Mozart meets Shakespeare
in the park
teenagers hang out
a thought on a page
of the printed future.
B.Z. in Rockport
It's already six o'clock
for the dress rehearsal
for my play "The Beards"
in the shady early night
the actors in form
and shaped for the sound
of their performance
and hopefully no chance
of any breakdown
in the last love affairs
or at sleepless insomnia
checking that no one
of the extras is left behind
if an actor has had glasses
of vodka or rum
the morning before
and that the choreography
has matched the upstaged
scenes as were decided
last week
that all costumes are
back from the city laundry,
the hors d'oeuvres
wine and cream dips
are ready for the cast party
and after playing
marriage broker
psychiatrist and a prophet
as well as art director
for a fortnight
we are ready, like Hamlet
or a ham to cut up
for our "Beards."
______________________
TOLSTOY AT YASNAYA-POLYANA
Who in times past
an aristocrat
strolled by pines
drank like the swallows
scourged from passion's
once grey Gogol overcoat
turns out to be weeping
on a Fall's dance
of the hours
over bare-iced sheets.
He walks this night alone
by breakwater's embankment
through a mute September
yet knowing his fevered ways
where black bread
is only a genuflection
of a hunger much deeper
than his own peace.
Over a lake landscape
the birdsong's communion
of a child's awareness
pervades him
here in these woodlands
the dreadful cold blazes
under a full moon
of Autumn's fretfulness
with a deep seclusion
only a Count may hide.
MANTUAN
(1447-1516)
A city on a hill dream
from a Christian Virgil
awakes to fulfill you
into writing ecologues,
as Mantuan,
the Carmelite poet
writes masterful dialogues
without interruption
from a monastery,
searches for words
against impolite corruption
at warm summer's noon
now perched on a hammock
trembling inside
by a tree's birds
nesting on branches
for an upturned future
of a church's reform.
_____________________
DANNIE ABSE LIVES ON
(1923-2014)
A clearing path
insightful for us to dream
from your now absent eyelets
that between your hands
of language and love
will restore to us
a more healing time
from our often plagued century
enlightening our grief
in your passages
of revealing the undeniable,
that whatever preserves
will whisper of your presence
in wondrous line upon line
appearances in our recollections
through arrivals of syllables
as prophetic proverbs
reach out by sailing words
in your home harbors
now translated in many shores
and welcomed
for Dannie Abse
a poet from Wales,
with medicinal cures
and Jewish folklore
always in his background
as a doctor in body and soul
with a second nature
of an osmosis of unusual depth
as an articulate companion
in understanding our cells
with sounding alarms against war
and injustice
chose poetry in his long life
to accompany
his journey of gentleness.
(for more about poet Dannie Abse, see www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11127571/Dannie-Abse-his-greatest-poems.html)
______________________
Today's LittleNip:
FALL ORANGE
Fall is an orange,
defoliated leaves us
breathless as we visit Rothko
with orange as red on red
as his color spectrum,
a sponged creation in its flow.
______________________
—Medusa
B.Z. and Kayaks