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 the 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 listening to radio speeches
by an Hispanic president
full of new solutions to the US famine while
looking over junkmail 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 on 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.


lilaplevy (c) august 1999

Periscope

Too many thoughts
have become headless soldiers
standing impotent watch
over the next great need.
Poke above the surface
to see God in melted babies,
thinned like blood to the brain,
Intelligence borrowed and
low
or Time now desperate for land
to lay down roots deep enough
to soar sequoia-like.
I never had potential like this
when I was young.

On the other hand,
knuckle down and sort the laundry
of memories, picking out the useful
from the tired
cut through in ribbons;
fold it all neatly for storage while you're at it.
This chore gets harder and harder
every day so check the paperwork:
it's cheerily
indignant
and wants for relevance.
And your progressive lenses
aren't helping anymore.

lila.p.levy (c) April and July 2010

lenses

spots on my lenses
obsessed with blocking my view
form maps of Mongolia

With apologies to Kay Ryan for posting her poem for Steve and Fred

Why We Must Struggle

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?

-Kay Ryan (c) Say Uncle, Grove Press 1991

strip (a poem for lent)

My wall of books needs editing
but like a Fat Tuesday sinner
I retch
rather than gently yield
this willful mother of a habit
and binge on another stack of books
now seeping into my bloodstream;
it shellacs my interior.

I am sick with words
the Tylenol-in-the-morning kind of sick
that reminds me
the liver is as old as I am
and the room went spinning
before I finally slept it off.

The stew of poems and psalms and epistles
is caught in my gullet.
Sutras seep from my pours.
I have lent my birthright to others,
painted my image with a thesis from a book;
regurgitated wisdom to form a hard candy coating.
I have silenced the kingdom within.

Give me space.
Let me think,
just a moment, please.
I need a simple glass of water
on the nightstand,
a few hours in my flannels,
stripping it all down
before a bathtub or a yoga mat.
God, give me quiet
and speak again to me,
directly in me, without words.


lila.p.levy, February 17, 2010