Anam Cara (Zak's Sonnet)

 

pot-laced chocolate-chip cookies fatten
the sweet distance that grows after we nest

together our souls age, weaken, to yield
uneaten pasta and unplanted palms

and unfinished sentences confess it
though I talk to you about it often

when we’re not talking – a horizon smiles,
protects us from the lust we have for each other

wise, I’m thinking you think I want something
more than the miracle we have foreseen:

two elderly old friends in thirty years
still slathering one another with space

candles tinkle “anam cara” and the
Gaelic backlights choice flowers from your yard
 
 

lila.p.levy, August 1997

 

2020

 

I will be thinking I did not raise my son to die
in a war waged for some personal agenda.

I will be thinking of a sister who can no longer cross
the chasm of Christian piety to talk to me.

I will be reading headlines of Asian world domination
and a fifty thousand dow.

I will weep for the suicide rate of Muslim women
in the post-oil-economy religious fundamentalism.

I will be experimenting with astroprojection.

I will be hearing radio speeches
from an Hispanic president
full of new solutions to the US famine while
looking over junk-mail about Mars homesteads.

I will struggle with philanthropy and memories,
still missing my lover’s face full of scars.

I will be too young
to be feeling this alone.

I will be assessing the performance
of a new breed of kayak that’s taken me
twenty years to afford.  I will be sitting, alone,
lightly in a green river, testing my salt,
swiveling my hips in a hula
through quiet currents.

I will be searching Latin markets
for natural textiles and things made of real wood.

I will be paying for all the personal technologies
that promise to usher me through an easier day
and growing mindful of my caffeine intake.

I will be lacking the brevity with which I once spoke
and regretting the diversity I once embraced, and
lamenting the Europe I’ll never see.

I will be feeling young enough
to want to be this alone.

 

 

lila.p.levy, August 1999

 

You. Standing in a doorway

 

this light passes through you

like a silk scarf

bleeding blues and greens

spinning swirls of turquoise

this door is open 

to a sparkling shoreline

seagrape and mangroves

you cling to the scene

like sand to damp feet

this doorjam holds you

like a frame

this moment, still

draws waves into sets

in the distant chaos of everything

you've remembered who you are

(c) Lila Pittard Levy, January 2014

2560 Jefferson Circle

Sarasota, Florida 34239

lilaplevy@gmail.com

Day Moon

 white on white sky

the moon has

followed us into

the manly space

of day.  She

wears her veil modestly

peeping over us

like Lorelei

the river nymph.

We work on

without noticing.

While the birds

 while the birds slip into their songs

of betrayal and yearning

I listen with interpreter’s ears

hearing laments

and despondence reverberating

 

(I could be wrong in my translations)

 

I am vast in my wanting

I must be rid of this burden

carried for years

on the backs of my loves

now deposited in my throat

and burning

 

or like a bile risen

on Easter morning

after three decades

in a putrefying cave

inside my own chest

 

(and people wonder why I retract)

 

But I am risen this morning

with a tentative hope

like birdsong

away now in the distance

 

lila.p.levy, may 2018

faithness

my biggest fear

is dying faithless

and wrong about God’s

abandonment

my biggest fear

is that I will forget

who I am and whose I am

to kill another year of bunny hopes

my biggest fear

is remembering

that I was once loved wrongly

and deserved to be

my biggest fear

is leaving poems to mold

among my father’s in the attic

my son also, left, shirking in guilt

three generations old

my biggest fear

is that I will try my best

to love

and find instead rejection

or worse yet, indifference

John Lennon wrote that at its simplest

there are two things only:

Fear and Love

my biggest fear

is “faithness” has gone the way of Faith

leaving Love too narrow to convince us

of our worthiness

      lila pittard levy may 2018

while the birds

while the birds slip into their songs

of betrayal and yearning

I listen with interpreter’s ears

hearing laments

and despondence reverberating

(I could be wrong in my translations)

I am vast in my wanting

I must be rid of this burden

carried for years

on the backs of my loves

now deposited in my throat

and burning

or like a bile risen

on Easter morning

after three decades

in a putrefying cave

inside my own chest

(and people wonder why I retract)

But I am risen this morning

with a tentative hope

like birdsong

away now in the distance

lila.p.levy, may 2018