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

Goalie Bias

How many times as a leader must you decide which team member gets the opportunity to shine?  And when you don’t get to select all the players on your team, what’s your attitude towards the ones you didn't select? You’re an influence on performance, right? Think for a moment about how your attitude supports or destabilizes a key member of your team.

My husband plays men’s league hockey twice a week. These are friendly beer-buddy teams and most have played together and against each other for years. They cycle in new young talent as late-teen “boys” become brash enough to skate with the old dogs. My husband is a player/coach/manager for both of his teams as he’s the guy who confirms the roster and texts everyone endlessly on game days to make sure enough guys show up, thus avoiding forfeit. His teammates often call him Reg – as those associated with hockey know the blue-eyed player/coach from the movie Slapshot – a famously mentoring hottie called Paul Newman. I believe the nickname fits my guy, in a lot of ways, not the least of which is my husband’s ability to put away hard-boiled eggs. 

This morning Reg was telling me about last night's game.  I’m often asleep when he gets home from his twice-weekly games, as they generally start at 9:30 or 10 pm. And what with the food and beer after the game, his arrival home is quite late.  I usually ask about the outcome as he crawls into bed, but last night I was sleeping soundly. So this morning we had a proper conversation about it.  

Seems the Bulldogs’ normal goalie, RJ was out for the week. Reg had been working to find a replacement. The backup he usually calls, a young gun "rink rat" who had helped them win more than once, had already accepted a fill-in slot with Empire Auto, their opposition in last night’s game. Less a rivalry than a one-up-man-ship, these two teams duked it out in the finals for last season’s championship – a game that happened only a couple months ago and ended in a last-second-of-overtime winning goal by the other team. I was at that game and it was a sad night, until the beer started flowing. 

Still looking for a goalie for last night’s game, Reg reached out to the league president at the rink. Unresolved until suit-up time, the Bulldogs learned that their goalie for the evening was a thin, “whiney” 22 year old who played terribly the last time he took the net for them. Despair may be too strong a word, but Reg was disappointed. They intended to show Empire who the real champions were tonight in this replay of last season’s final game. Alas, in that moment in the locker room, it wasn't meant to be.

But that goes to show how, in hockey, as in life, you cannot let previous loss or poor performance get into your head. As a matter of fact, you must quickly “move off” a bad shot in one moment of play or you could get very hurt by a puck that’s coming your way in this next moment of play. “So it goes” to quote Kurt Vonnegut Jr at every death of dignity. Reg rallied the troops and gave them the “you got this” speech that really none of them needed, but appreciated nonetheless. Reg has been known to motivate the guys with a “let’s f#ckin’ do this sh!t” as the team takes the ice. 

Now, not being at the game, I can only imagine it. A block of ten grown men, sure they were going down but faithfully bringing their best anyway. And bring it they did. With excellent scoring and surprising goalie skills from someone who could have been written off – the final score of 9 to 3 favored the (under)Bulldogs. And there you have it: never assume someone’s past performance will tell you all that much (really) about what they will do in this moment, especially when you show a little faith by doing your best work beside them. So, take that to your next team meeting, leaders. That’ll make a difference in the outcome, for the game and the season.

 lilaplevy, © February 2014 

unexpected sherry

Crisp. Wine as nail polish remover

Wide, then stopping sweet

The taste of mentorship

A working crush, a kooky inspiration

to be better than I am

It’s the manly-sweet voice in my head

A small girl’s pattern

watching her own performance from just inside the door

I try harder

to be worthy of his momentary attention,

to show qualities translatable on a mother’s tongue

My dad kept a small bottle of

acetone-laced liquid in a vial in his desk

MacGyver-like agent that cleaned mistakes

and misspent glue

Later we found it among his accouterments

I am to be writing my annual review

Assess professional contributions

as I twirl a tiny glass

Test tacky connections to colleagues

who might value my performance

from secondhand account

I must revisit each strength and gap

in a year I wish to forget

Perhaps I can submit a poem

My only product ever given full marks

by my father – even though

he never read them through to the end

© lila.p.levy, March 2013

Shame

Shame, a photo by lilalevy1063 on Flickr.

delicacy

I test an impossibly small joy
Lay it flat on the spare bed
As I wait for your call
After you finish cleaning up todays job.

I too finish an impossibly flat job
Test its wait on you
After I clean my small bed
of spare joy.

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

when my husband can't sleep

When my husband can't sleep
and I dream;
scientists experiment with
surgically grafting a man
to a woman's body
and she dies, and
he is left a cretin.

When my husband can't sleep
and I dream;
we are the last liberals
in the country.
Our escape to safety
is long and trippy
with shortcuts through medical labs
getting lost in suburban malls
walking miles in the marsh
after a wrong turn in a hotel lobby.

When my husband stirs,
I dream we're
touring a Buddhist monastery.
I dream
young gang boys,
bored with tired teachers
and vastly intelligent
conspire to destroy the school
so they can be left alone to
teach themselves trigonometry.
I dream Arnold Schwartzenegger is offended
that I touch him deliberately on his forehead
in front of his small daughter.

When my husband rises,
announces he's going to watch some TV,
I reach for his arm as he leaves
then ride a chestnut horse into
an old farmhouse,
the one I believe
my grandfather grew up in.

When my husband can't sleep
And I dream;
I lose him in a crowd
on a cruise on the Seine.
I search endlessly for a private toilet.
I find unpacked boxes from a long ago move.
I remember the Buddha's sixth perception:
Allow the present to be.




lila.p.levy, June 2009