Every Poetic Gezundheit

I am not sentimental about old men

mumbling the Hebrew by rote

with no more feeling than one says gesundheit
- Marge Piercy

Amidst hearing
Even while seeing
Poets can be deaf
Poets can be blind
Missing what they miss
Wishing not to find

Many cramped rooms
Filled with old men
Many words, many years
Again, again.

Marge Piercy likes
Feeling every moment but
Is unsentimental
About old Jewish men
Reciting words by rote

Did Marge’s movement
Trading dusty books for ripe tomatoes
Get it better by and large?
Are their young not riding by rote?
Mumbling their own gezundheits?
Building their own temples?

Even if for her
It must be either or
Has Marge ever wondered
If that’s the way it is?

Has it dawned on her that
Maybe these men’s mumbled words
Have carried them to survive to see
More blessings than she can imagine?

I’d write more, but I’m tired
From rising early today
Listening and mumbling
For three hours with ten
Ninety year old men

These are men
who’d sooner die
Than miss one morning of prayer
Men who count their blessings
Every krecht, every day

Men whose every gezundheit
Is more poetic than any
Award winning sneeze.

THOUGHTS BEFORE SLEEP

An old chavrusa
told me one day
that he wished
he could hold me
upside down
and shake out
all my distractions
like in Underdog's intro
when the robber
does that to a man
to steal all his change.

"People You May Know," Translated

Someone You Dated/Almost Dated
Sibling Of Your Sibling's Friend
Fraquaintance From Childhood
Someone Who Is FB Friends With Everyone
Friend's Friend-- You Never Hit It Off
Celebrity/Politician
Friend's Spouse
Person Who Never Remembers You

For Werner Fleischmann and Ruth Rosado

Years ago she said
to call her when
I have my own son
and tell her if I
better understand my dad

I found another way
Because I'm son-less still
Yet since my father died
I better understand him.

Tiberius (Writing Is Posturing)

It's hard to just be
if you're writing it down:

Water wrote the book
on just being.

Thus, the expression
of going with the flow.

So it's ironically time for me
to stop sitting all angsted up

at the Kineret, wondering how
these words will sound to you.

Time to let the mountains
and the sea write me.