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I. Very Good
Chiaroscuro And God created man in His image (Gen 1:27)
and God created light and He saw that light was very good it illuminated the whole world its luminosity so intense, so brilliant and God hid away the light from man
and Rembrandt found the light that God had hidden away and God commanded Rembrandt saying use the hidden light to illuminate mankind
and Rembrandt painted with the hidden light and he painted darkness and he painted light and Rembrandt saw that the darkness was good and he saw that the light was very good and Rembrandt created The Night Watch
and Rembrandt saw that the earthly host half in darkness was good and Rembrandt saw that the light of Captain Cocq was very good so too, the light of his lieutenant and the little girl with the dead hen, was very good
and Rav Kook saw Rembrandt’s paintings that he had painted with the hidden light and he perceived that Rembrandt was a tzadik for Rembrandt had painted with the light God had hidden away for messianic times — Julian Alper
[Note: Rav Kook - Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook (first Chief Rabbi of Israel) saw Rembrandt’s paintings in London, where he lived from 1916-1919.]
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jackal crossing the night road under our headlights shadow moving from shadow to shadow — Esther Cameron * The Water Cycle
S P L A S H !! As the word erupts into the air — A massive rock vomited explosively From the dark cauldron of the world’s seething guts, Cooling exponentially as it plummets, Smashing into the sea and sinking Without trace, Unheeded For millennia,
But raising great daughter-plumes of water, Fracturing into a myriad of Glittering crystals, smoothing as they fall To glowing satin-lustre pearls, Salting the mountaintops, Cascading into tinkling runnels and streams, Launching over cap-rocks As sparkling waterfalls into deep plunge-pools,
And mists of glistening droplets drenching tree-canopies, Down hundreds of metres of Convolute vines with dripping leaves, Onto crowning cycads And into thunderous chasms with sodden fern banks And steaming sunless glades, Saturating the lush soil, Seeping and filtering through the shales and mudstones, Distilled, Clear, Pure. — Miriam Alper
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Western Sky
Look at the western sky Fading from reds to grays, Souls like the sunset die Worn out by their days.
Fading from reds to grays Losing their vital zest Worn out by their days They sink into the west.
Losing their vital zest Souls, like the sunset, die, They sink into the west – Look at the western sky. — Judy Koren * FLOWER Moon
Change comes along with everything now so much so I want to emulate June’s flower moon, a month for blooming as if there is no end to opening up. Change works easier this way. With a willingness to move with it whether I am exactly ready for it or not. whether I have a clear plan or a teacher’s lessons. I am walking further than I usually do and praying for rain even though the desert is covered with flowers, the yucca’s white petals exactly like angel’s wings. And in such a time as this with our leaders throwing the familiar overboard willy nilly, what we know that works gone as if we can live this way, without any touchstones. I depend on the feel of the bark on the palm of my hand, Aloe, what grows fatter and greener and taller than I expected, parsley green and lacey and ready to use for dinner. So I stick to what I know inside me, how I imagine I will bloom like lavender in the dark of night, take each job and breath slow and easy, try to love again because change always comes with it. I’ll give back, give over, try again. No end to the flowers blossoming now in a season like this, familiar and new at once, so many petals blooming and I try to do the same, a woman growing older, going for more as I have always done, stepping slowly, leaping with abandon. — Charlene Langfur
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October Past “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Eccles 3:11
Standing at this same window I remember these October leaves from last year sated with smoldering orange
and again the fire orchards bloom, shawls of dove-white frost are cast over gold and crimson.
No fuel in the old sun, yearning out of tune - still this sienna healing seasonally resumes
at the gates of the year’s cold tomb. — Hannah Amit
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Beneath Nomadic Stars
I love the slight breeze that slips beneath the window and wraps itself around me like a mantle. At night when the secure house slumbers, it’s then spirit finds fissures in casings presses in with visions of tree shadows dancing like tall thin maidens on snow. It’s when I’m swaddled in coverlets and safety and think journeys are surely ended that beneath nomadic stars from late November's glade -
I hear whispered invitations. —Hannah Amit *
Something Lingers
It was an old woods on a damp winter day the trees grayish green moss and vine bark scarred and dented like armor battered in battles as one tree leaned on another hurting and old history lingers when the time gets cold
It was an old stone wall tumbling on one side like cannonballs tiredly separating who knows from what a war was fought here but that was long ago history lingers where little grows
The squirrels had nests high in the trees the chipmunks hid in the holes in the wall and under roots the path was well-worn a cold wind came to blow it started to snow history lingers in dreams of lost homes
My young dog began to play the trees sprung silver wands the old wall an ancient castle and a rock a dragon to slay the path a way beyond it changes, it always changes but something lingers on. — Susan Oleferuk
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Brinton Brook
The day started sunny the trail packed with ice and snow shone then the sky darkened, darkened as if turning to night a wind ambushed fierce and sharp the snow came swirling wrapping white birches into ghosts, but I felt no fear all was apiece, in place, at peace from a larger somewhere
I thought of all the places I had been long broken streets I still fled in dreams places I didn’t belong and so many places closed, blocked, locked not free, not for many, not for me
The squirrel that ran before the snow belonged the wind, the birches, the cold, the dark belonged all of us made part of a complete a composition of ground, sky, trees and snow the borders life and death. —Susan Oleferuk
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The Wren’s Song
In the darkest days of winter right before the dying light a woman plays with her dog and a wren sings
The woman and the dog hear the wren singing the notes of the curves of time harmonic motion rising and falling with the wintery ways every evening before the coming of the night
When the dog is long gone and the woman no more the wren’s song will still be heard a syncopation of the season’s shadowy light. — Susan Oleferuk
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Stanzas: Composed While Watching A Cardinal In A Snowstorm
Forlorn sits a cardinal upon a bough And naked are the branches on the tree, Although the driving sleet, ice and snow Has capped a winter stamp upon the lea Still sits the cardinal upon a bough Statue-like sits he still within the tree.
Within this barren season sits nobly A figure abandoned waiting for spring, A sudden side movement is but only A trivial shedding of snow from wing, Then resetting assumes a dignity Of a lonesome, mute, longing for spring.
Fashioning himself with a thoughtful mien, For whom shall he sing? Who shall seek to know Him? Loneliness touches this winter scene Assessing an inward hunger to grow Scaling to point, passion and pain convene, Waiting and yearning for someone to know.
But the quiet stillness is unbroken And the cold, winter fury still unwrought Of a white season that sheds no token Of a bosom resting with joyful thought, Perched upon a branch with song unspoken Of a longing whose days are yet unwrought. — Clarence P. Van Dyke
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Green nature Opens in me Unknown pores In my mumbling, confused soul Hum of insects, dazzling sunlight Clumps of olive trees Running streams Everything grows, shines Cows lowing Everything fruitful and multiplying Everything perfect and beautiful In many colors and shades of color Quantities and directions Vegetable and animal Sharp and soft Flying and crawling Rustling and gushing Silent and noisy And between the stones and the soil Edges of pale reddish potsherds And a fragment of some vessel, sharp and dark Silently testify That here once walked a man or boy Plowing a furrow Waiting for some girl To find earth in his eyes —Araleh Admanit
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Resurrection
My babies had towels with round polar-bear ears, a crib bird-decorated,
their night-lights were owls to assuage midnight fears; on their mobiles rotated
bright flowers and bees to teach them the world harbored treasures like these.
Will those born today know of bees, owls or bears, turtles scrabbling to sea
arctic foxes in snow, so many creatures that now are so rare, or have ceased to be?
So blinded we were, never counting the cost of ‘progress’, that magical, devilish word: can those yet unborn resurrect what we’ve lost? — Judy Koren
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The Great Extinctions
Hail Planet Earth! You spin between bare neighbours, Give birth to life that puts their deserts to shame— From whales to humans, roses to giant cacti, But to be their forever-home you cannot claim.
Five times you’ve let most of your creatures perish, Though you’ve left enough alive to evolve again. Perhaps to human protests you’d reply, “Moral reasoning is your domain.”
Yet, Planet Earth, with all your imperfections, Your horrors even, still you touch our hearts. Though you destroy, you also bear and feed, And in you are rooted our sciences and arts. —Henry Summerfield
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Dodo
They laughed
at the curve of its beak, No cathedral warned the bird.
No prophet
descended [Beware the species that names everything]
The dodo had
evolved
No wolves.
Just
fruitfall, Then came men—
their ships
swollen
History
entered the island
The bird
vanished stupidly, trustingly.
And now
children draw it
Somewhere
beneath museum glass [Discovery = Permission to Destroy] —Tushar Sen
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Franklin Tree
The last wild
one Trees prefer that.
No headlines
followed
Only wind
Yet the
species refused
A few
cuttings survived Imagine the humiliation:
to exist only
because
The Franklin
tree blooms now
White petals.
It has no
wilderness left
Only fences,
labels,
Only the
sterile mercy
And every
spring it flowers Is survival still survival
when the
forest itself —Tushar Sen
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The Winds Surrounding the Fire
This gentle land I know changed I know not why, not slow unlike the seasons in their holiday dress
Trees are broken, bent and charred smoke speaks earth to harmed and psyche scarred smirking looks of money passed, burnt books amnesia of depth and complexity only left is the enemy you against me not war blaring rage maws open lies mechanically spoken
Ignorance was ever lauded never the route to progress or goodness the ten brought down from a mountain let’s add to the count who and what is left out
History praises the conquerors of lands history derides the conquerors of their lands someone always wants what is not theirs someone always wants to control :Black, Brown, Women, Weak and Poor their soul is twisted by desire but they can never control the winds surrounding the fire. — Susan Oleferuk
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RFRC
Online I had ordered the way cool kit with a self-assembly algorithm. The drone conveying a cryptically wrapped egg carton, full but almost buoyant in air, alighted on my stoop.
Bubble pack vaporized on touchdown, one oval titanium shell silently slid open, and out popped a downy proto-droid, within hours blossoming into a full size Radio Free Range Chicken, Model 83W529FX3N6-7.
Sweet Chicky and I headed out to my wireless coop, where she convincingly pecked, preened, and also Fourier-transformed signals from my hand held official 4-H fob.
But then I noticed a suspicious metallic ticking, barely audible beneath all the lifelike clucking and squawking. Who would embed such a thing? Was my new purchase the latest link in Russia’s autonomous kill chain, tempting geeks like me with faux reminders of Mama’s matzo ball soup? —Donald Mender
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The Fairytale’s Over
The credits rolled on a predictable “happily ever after” note. Bambi, triumphant, stood with his dad, seven dwarfs chased the Evil Queen off the mountain’s ledge and a generation of kids were tucked into a million little racecar beds.
A generation adrift in dreams, snoozed through their fairytales flattened by the collapsed walls of a caved-in 20th century, AWOKE to mounting debts. AWOKE on sidewalks. AWOKE to the reality that this movie was never Disney, but just a handful of happy little scenes in a bizarre film by Fellini. —Michael Roque
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Warm Breeze
Warm breeze, where have you been so long were you in mighty trees watching an eaglet born and in joy sliding over sky, plains and sea
Warm breeze you are needed for many a head is low in despair somewhere geese are flying on your paths and the cottonwood flies like fairy spells bare dirt is not enough to hold a dreaming soul so one must look up
Warm breeze, so many messages you carry I know which one is for me its smell, its feel, its memory
Warm breeze, fare thee well mercurial, flirtatious, capricious perhaps powerful still we will hold earth and sea we will hold till our hours run out and we can no longer feel, we will hold. — Susan Oleferuk-
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A Prayer of Planet Earth
At first they were weak, far-flung, at first they were very few and scattered thinly among my rivers, grasslands, trees: I could shake them off like fleas from a dog’s back. But they grew in power, cunning, might: more numerous than the stars at night.
Then they eclipsed the stars with their artificial light, made weapons, started wars: proud, foolish, vain, headstrong, whatever they did was wrong and in their eagerness to fight each other, they couldn’t see that what they were destroying was me.
I prayed for a clean sweep, for the broom of evolution to fling them onto the rubbish heap of the universe — a solution arrived at, unhappily, too late: even the Lord can make a mistake, (at least so it appears) once in a couple of million years.
Dying, I dream of recreation, the miracle of rebirth: the joy and exultation of a newborn Planet Earth: surely You can do that, Lord? all that’s needed is Your word— but please, take my advice: don’t create humans twice! — Judy Koren
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River Reflections
Under deep-linen water in-the-midst of a copse, that which is heavy such as a hickory limb felled by wind and fallen into soft chalk arms, sinks and remains a part of things
that which is weightless though not scorned, first kiss or a fairy charm is danced down the estuary around corners and into campfire reflections on a distant shore.
Such things insubstantial will come around again wet and useless in late autumn perhaps in winter, seeking pity and comfort in the arms of a mother.
And she will run from the edge of a grace-filled river to embrace them. She will hide them in the heart of a drowned shellbark never to be forgotten or again taken lightly. —Hannah Amit
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BS”D, 1 Nissan 5786, between sunset and starshine
Ten Crowns of radiance wait to be revealed Wait for a sign For the time
A ray of East ignites the heavens Light clothes itself in a vessel
An arrow cleaves the firmament to smite wickedness A steadfast home front murmurs prayers anticipates deliverance
The humbled Their outcry bursts From sealed cellars of falsehood — Tziporah Faiga Lifshitz
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