Helen
Bar-Lev, IL
Exciting
Developments
We are in an Exciting
Development phase, it would seem. Karina Klesko, (Sketchbook
editor and owner, has asked me to become a contributing
editor for SKETCHBOOK; of course I have
agreed. What I shall be doing is interviewing Israeli
poets to begin with, and then international poets. The
first interview is with Susan
Rosenberg, the wonderful and energetic 86 year old
secretary of Voices Israel; the next will
be with Thilde Fox.
After dreaming about it for
three years, we are finally getting together a poetry group
here in the Upper Galilee. It will be at the home of Tommy
Berman, who was editor in chief of the annual Voices
Anthology, and then handed it over to me. Tommy
lives in Kibbutz Amiad, is a Professor Emeritus of
Oceanography, a wonderful poet.
Below, my contribution for
Valentine’s Day:
Free Verse
Fruit
Amnesia
Were there kiwis this
Winter?
brown skinned green kiwis
full of Vitamin C and all good things
I can’t recall touching their brown furriness
or eating them
or even seeing them
Were there fejoias this Winter?
I can’t remember
I who loves so fejoias,
sap green skins,
yellow fruit tingling the tongue,
pouting the lips
You love when you tease me to a pout,
see me peeved
so that when you laugh
the power of it purifies the anger
reverses the frown
you like the feel of your laughter power
Next week the calendar turns to Spring
I am remembering the vague taste of chestnuts—
also a favourite
savouring them with the palate of winters past
but this one, just leaving,
seems to be a fruit basket of amnesia
And I wonder
if the same thing will happen in Spring
will I forget I’ve tasted my cherished cherries
munched my sweet peas crunchy green
and fresh from the pod
will I not recall eating golden apricots non-stop?
Because I’ve been eating your kisses for nourishment
and the sweetness of your presence
has taken precedence
over the seasons
over all reason…
And yes, indeed,
the prize winners for the Cyclamens and Swords annual poetry
competition have been announced. Donna Langevin’s The Best
Way to Eat a Snowflake. You may read all the other prize
winning poems on the Cyclamens and Swords website:
www.cyclamensandswords.com
Donna
Langevin
The best
way to eat a snowflake
Say
grace before you begin
then delicately
as a butterfly
dipping
her feet into nectar
taste your way
around
and around
the shape
of its divine pattern
to preserve
the symmetry
of that moment
it tumbled
from the infinite
on to your red mitten
When you reach
the very last hole
at the center
of its being
melt your tongue inside it
tenderly as a lover
Helen
Bar-Lev, artist, poet
www.helenbarlev.com
Senior
Editor,
Cyclamens and Swords Publishing
www.cyclamensandswords.com
Poetry
editor for Presence:
An International Journal of Spiritual Direction,
www.sdiworld.org
Contributing
editor,
SKETCHBOOK, A Journal for Eastern and Western
Short Forms
http://poetrywriting.org/
International Senior Poet Laureate, 2009
Amy Kitchener Foundation
