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Archive for April, 2023

We Call It Vision

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2023| 2 Comments » 

I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face. (Franz Kafka)


WE CALL IT VISION

Sometimes poetry speaks truth better than lines of fact. I don’t have many syllables to share today. One haiku contains lines containing 5, 7, 5 syllables, and one tanka delivers spaces of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables.  Peace to all.



DURING A BLACK-AND-WHITE TV SCENE

” I don’t see color,”
says a white man to lynching
as he leaves the scene.



COMMUNITY

The flower sees bees
coming and opens petals.
Possibilities.
Plant and insect share alike.
Even as the stem stands still.

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Dachau in May of 1938

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 20, 2023| 1 Comment »

bloody keyboard

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” ― Primo Levi

Dachau, May 1938

(Six months before The Night of Broken Glass)

Part I

The little girl overheard Mama tell Great Uncle Benjamin, “I feigned interest in marketplace pork.”

He answered, “You can’t fool Nazis. You should be true to yourself.”

The little girl was pecking the piano one key at a time, black and white, high and low tones. Uncle’s happy songs lay hidden inside the sounds like secret buried treasure, with a beauty that stretched from one side of the keyboard to the other, sweet sounds that rose and fell, music that told a story she wasn’t allowed to repeat, not even in whispers.

She wondered why the sons and daughters of  Abraham and Jacob’s Traditions should anger anyone. The child searched and found only dissonance under her fingertips when she added more than one key. Uncle had promised to come at noon the next day and lead her small fingers across the scales, but it would take work, an attentive ear, and love. She would practice. And learn.

But dark filled the sky And Uncle never arrived.

Papa came home and said Uncle had been taken. Papa had missed capture by a shadow.

He’d found a way to leave Munich with her and her mother, a passageway as narrow as the eye of a needle used for silk, dangerous, yet their only hope.

And the little girl followed, believing that Uncle would come someday and lead her hands into music because she could work, and listen, and love as well as anyone.

Part II

Benjamin felt the heat of the men next to him, a herd, silenced by fear so strong it had an odor, gut-wrenching and rancid.

One of the guards outside the gate glanced at Benjamin and then looked down. The guard’s face looked familiar.

Benjamin and the young guard stood beside a message bent into the metal: Arbeit Macht Frei, Work sets you free.

The guard had been his student, a youth who expected a golden sound from a flip of the wrist and a closed ear.

Benjamin’s six-year-old niece tried harder.

He imagined her waiting for him as he dropped his shoes next to the others, outside the sign marked brausebad, the bathhouse, the place of cleansing, perhaps the beginning, perhaps the end, but never destruction.

He prayed that even if he couldn’t return, and his niece didn’t learn his song, she would create her own.

previously published

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Rainy day Traffic or Let’s See How Crazy We Can Drive

Posted in humor, tagged , , , , , , , on April 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

road in the rain

They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic. (Steven Wright)

I wonder how many drivers have made road trips—without wondering what the…heck is that guy doing? One driver is traveling at NASCAR speed and another is moving twenty miles an hour in a fifty-plus zone.

When my younger son was about kindergarten age I turned onto a narrow road behind a woman, obviously elderly. Her shoulders sloped, and her head leaned over the steering wheel. She drove the center yellow line as if she were failing a sobriety test in slow motion.

When I reacted, my youngster responded, “Oh Mom, maybe she just has old-timer’s disease.

I don’t recall how I got around her, or when she turned onto another road. My son’s innocence, however, stays with me.

His simplicity didn’t nullify the lady as a roadway threat. It did help me get through the moment.

Years later, my middle granddaughter was in the car when a driver cut me off with half a foot to spare.

I gasped, but my granddaughter saved the moment again.

“Grandma, is that what’s called a jackass?”

“Bad driver,” I answered.

Unfortunately, not every accident is an almost. Signs above the highway note the statistics.

Today I am driving in the rain. Someone, male or female—it doesn’t matter—passes me on the left over the center line, misses an oncoming car by about a foot, and then repeats the favor with the next car.

Peace, I think. Not in pieces. Someday. Somehow.

(The above is an edited blog from five years ago.)

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The Seed, a Short Story

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , on April 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

apples in an apple

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  (Henry David Thoreau)

The Seed

The seed lay snug within her apple. Wind, rain, and sun brushed the surface of her fruit. Inside, protected, the seed grew dark and smooth. The tree told its growing parts that spring blossoms lived on the tree’s branches before they were formed. However, the seed did not want to hear about anything that happened a long time ago. She preferred to rest in a comfortable, firm sweetness that grew as summer brought warmth and long daylight stretches.

The seed expected endless safety. However, one afternoon in late summer, she felt a sharp jolt as her round, red home was snapped from its branch. Other apples left their places, too. They traveled miles from their birthplace.

The seed felt its fleshy home split with a sharp object. She was scooped out with the other seeds who lived with her. They were tossed aside.

“What is happening to me?” she called.

“Or us?” the other seeds replied.

But the seed didn’t hear. She was already taken away.

A dark time passed as the seed lay surrounded by moist soil in a small container for what seemed to be a century. Then something happened. She felt a violent tug in her center. She knew she was changing.

A creature, a lot like the one who pulled her from her home, grabbed her from the smaller container and placed her inside the ground. In time, she realized she looked much different. She was frightened.

“What is happening to me?”

A tall tree towered above her. She did not yet realize that she was also a tree, not until the days warmed and white blossoms appeared on her branches. They became fruit when the heat continued.

“Why did I worry so much. Everything I have experienced is natural. I must warn the other seeds. Somehow. They must not suffer like I did.”

She spoke to her own seeds. They didn’t listen. No matter how loud she yelled.

“Hush,” the wind told her. “You can’t find instant wisdom, especially if you haven’t discovered it for yourself.”

As the season passed, another creature appeared and stole one apple, and then another.

The seed, now a tree herself, watched.

“Wind,” she called. “Have I found wisdom yet?”

The wind did not answer. Nevertheless, the new apple tree waited even as winter came and robbed her of her gifts.

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