The Pine

They severed the broad arms of the pine

that just the day before held my spirit

close to the sky.

It wasn’t like a car wreck.

It was worse.

I flinched, I ducked, I dove for cover.

I fled inside and pulled the blinds.

Five of the seven

trees next door – 

who will house the birds?

They paved paradise because

You know, the sap, it drips

On our cars.

My father was a boy

when that tree was a seedling.

The first ground he trod was

among pines in Ukraine.

He felt the soil through shoes

his father made.

It was blind hope

that brought my grandfather

to Jamaica Plain where when

my father followed he felt 

no soil beneath those soles,

just pavement.

So he ran to the pond and

walked the paths I’ve run and

fell in love with the same water

we all drink today.

He tied the laces on his skates and

slipped out with blind faith onto

ice too fragile to support him

If his life had ended that day

cut down like the boughs of trees,

who would have held me on his shoulders?

I’d be a ghost – 

a nestless bird.

On Having Written

When we added a deck

and more windows our

little dark cabin turned 

into a treehouse where 

the children inside us

are never alone.

Today the wind is so wild

branches wave their

loud warnings and 

an unmoored unmanned

motorboat twists, lost among

whitecaps on the pond.

At the feeder, Karl Marx

and his life partner 

Rosa Luxembourg -- I think of them 

as my cardinals but of course ownership 

is an idea they’d staunchly reject -- 

take patient, generous turns with 

the nuthatches, titmice, and

jays. That poor bluejay. 

His weight on the bar snaps 

the “order here” window shut

like a trap. He waits

not understanding this seed’s 

not for him. Nothing against blue jays

or squirrels or even raccoons but

black-oiled sunflower hearts are 

not cheap. You know?

The goldfinches will soon 

blaze forth their gender when

warmth and desire makes

only the males burst into flame.

My baby birds are all flown but

these grandfather giants who

introduced me to Karl Marx

and Rosa still burst

into new life each Spring

a cacophony of blossoms and bold

crop of cherries on which

waxwings will feast. And I’ll funnel 

boiled sugar water into

a tube, which will bring back, 

I hope, the hummingbird

whom I call Buzz. 

If the rapscallion raccoon who 

broke two good feeders

last summer while stealing

the seed appears once again 

I will feed him some

rice cakes and coo at his 

wee greedy hands that are 

so much like ours. If he

can’t make it, that’s okay, too.  

I’ll just doze in the sun in 

my Mother’s Day chair,

unmasked, a lot like last year,

when the story I’m writing 

about summer and why to 

save trees 

was just a stroke in my notebook 

a seed in my heart. 

Everything, Everything You Want in a YA Novel

Thanks to Grub Street, my email chat with Nicola Yoon, bestselling author of Everything, Everything, can be read here! Thanks also to Joelle Hobeika for hooking me up with Nicola. She is inspirational! If she can write a novel while caring for an infant, you can, too!

And here's a great column that will help you beat winter writer's block. The Write Practice helps me a lot ... it's a great way to start the daily procrastination. It helped me ... I'm cruising again. Hope you are, too. Hugs to the #amwriting folks everywhere. OMMMM.

Syrian Children

My son at two

knew nothing of war.

Darth Vader

and Emperor Palpatine

all he knew of evil.

My son at twenty-two

has marched 

for #BlackLivesMattter

picketed before the offices 

of hard-hearted corporate-college 

capitalists denying janitors

jobs and a fair wage.

My son is safe

-- for now.

But with all he knows

he writes songs

that make hearts

ache like his often does

for the sons and daughters

of others.

We all

love our sons

love our daughters

beyond words.

But our photographs?

They're as different

as our tongues.

Copyright 2015

HOPE and GRATITUDE

I have so little to say, which is a Rare Occasion.

Here's to LOVE and EQUALITY and JUSTICE for ALL.

Dedicated to Paul R, Beth, Paul F, Katharine, David, Howard, and Terry, just a few of the so many family members and long-time friends for whom I'm celebrating today!

Let's always remember 6/26/15! 

A REVIEW: Going Over, YA by Beth Kephart

There are so few novels about teenagers in the East and West sections of Berlin that I was excited to find Kephart's slender volume about two young people in love in the early 1980s. As far as I know, this teen more-than-a-romance, based on true stories of escaping East Berlin, may be the only one in English--I am now on a feverish search for more in German.

Kephart sugarcoats nothing in this beautiful story written in evocative prose. Her fascination with and love and admiration for the people of Berlin are palpable.

Indeed, Berlin is a city that continually reinvents itself, which it could not do without the indomitable spirit of its people.

Oh, Berlin, your air is both heavy with tragedy and the past, and shining with optimism and hope. You are alive with art and music. When with you, I feel the sorrow of your people, the hope of those who are determined to keep sight of strong beliefs and love for family, friends, and justice. Berlin, you propel me backwards and forwards simultaneously, even while I stand in awe, breathing your presence, the present. You are richly represented in Kephart's novel--your young and your old; your hope and your despair; your regrets and your penance; your revolutionary spirit, intellect, and solidarity.

Every time I fly into Berlin I feel like I've time traveled, but I can never pinpoint to which time. Along the Spree I loll in a time of peace, picnics, and privilege; by the Gedächtniskirche and Denkmäler I admire the willingness--almost obsessive acceptance of responsibility--of your young people to own their parents' mistakes; in the streets of your many neighborhoods I commune with generations and linger over plaques in the pavement and plaques on the walls. By both the Fernsehturm and the Galleries Lafayette I marvel at the hypocrisy and vanity of us all.

By the Leere Bibliothek im Bebelplatz I feel the presence of Heinrich Heine in his powerful words: Dort wo man Bücher verbrent, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen: "Where men burn books, in the end they will also burn people." But the thing is--Heine's great Romantic spirit lives there, both presaging men's brutal folly and mourning his own people. What an emblem of consciousness and spirit, warning of the darkness within humanity, and testimony to the timelessness of brutality, the fragility of honor, compassion, and ethics.

Currently, I am planning and researching a novel about teenagers in Berlin. Since I was a college student, I've wanted to write about the revolutionary spirit and courage of young Germans who as part of the White Rose (die Weiße Rosa) believed in freedom, courageously acted upon their convictions, and were silenced by the Nazis. Now, I can write about those who helped freedom come to pass so many years after Sophie and Hans Scholl and their compatriots lost their lives in an attempt to prevent fascism from doing its filthy work. However, now aware that the law of unintended consequences also ruled Der Fall der Mauer and die Wiedervereinigung, I have some additional thoughts to share ... and will do so in my next long writing project. Beware! ;-)

Meanwhile ...

Ich danke Ihnen, Beth Kephart, für Ihre Darstellung der Anstrengungen und Kraft für das Weiterleben der Berliners ! Ein schöner Roman! Fünf Sterne!

#Bloomsday My Style

Shrimpy, plump Becky Birdie stumbled into her infinitesimal bathroom, bearing a chalice on which an emory board and a toothbrush lay crossed. A terrycloth robe, unbelted, clung to her legs in the humid June air. She held the chalice aloft and intoned:

Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

Halted, she peered out her one narrow window into that of the neighbor across from her and called out sweetly:

--Come over, Ralph Waldo the XXIInd! Come over, you fearless Unitarian.