The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Ben Berman LOVE Our sages say: "And there is not a thing that has not its place." And so man too has his place. Then why do people sometimes feel so crowded?
—Martin Buber Sunday afternoon Whenever I end up at Curtin's Roadside Tavern, praising the dulling buzz of light beer and talking to some woman about the day's cool jacket weather, how the clouds seemed to threaten before they disappeared, I begin thinking about all the weird ways that I've almost died—the warm blood that trickled down my thighs, the glass shards on the ledge surely as sharp as the teeth of the wild dogs circling beneath me, as sharp as the focus on each step when I grabbed the weak and bony grip of a stumbling, drunken bus driver and inched weightlessly across a river, leaning on knees that hadn't locked so tight since a scantily clad saddhu waved his tridents in the air, then hurled a burning log at my head—and I can feel my restless legs burning and aching as they dangle above the sticky floor, as my ankles bang against the foot rail. And the more she leans in close, the more I feel the space between us, as though I've already crowded too many stories into just one body. PRIDE AND HUMILITY Only when man reaches the highest rung, when he reaches his full stature, only then does he become truly humble in his own eyes, and knows what it is: "to bow before Thee." —Martin Buber
picking up a friend's daughter from dance rehearsal Because work has a way of stretching me thin I'd always thought of stretching as the ten minute warm-up before I ran my laps— push hard against a wall or collapse into myself and attempt to touch those faraway toes—I thought we stretched to reach something, or, at most, to stave off injury. But watching this woman lift off the floor, spring into a fragile balance, you'd think that stretching, itself, were the dance, as she swivels and folds, streaming and flowing from bend to arch to bow, her calf floating effortlessly above the brass rail— as though delicate were different from frail. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |