Issue 12
Fall 2002
Tom Berman
For almost 50 years, on and off, I have been a member of Kibbutz Amiad in the Upper Galilee,Israel, . I am a scientist (aquatic microbiology) and most of my research has been focussed on the Sea of Galilee (known here as Lake Kinneret). Occasionally I have also had a chance to work on various real seas and oceans. I grew up and attended school in Glasgow, Scotland having arrived there aged 5 from Czechoslovakia with the Kindertransport in 1939. Further education was in the U.S.A, at Rutgers University and MIT. I am married with one wife, three daughters, and five granddaughters. Most of my publications to date have been scientific but now and again I have had some poems appear in press [Voices Israel; Ariel; Full Circle (Pittenbruach Press), Voices from Israel (Belle Terre Press); Determinations II, Ariga, Phatitudes].
My first collection of poetry, "Shards, a Handful of Verse" has just been published by Writers Club Press and is available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon or Books-a-Million.
Silences
i
last retreat
of lovers,
erstwhile poets,
charlatans,
the perplexed
and the truly wise
of this world
who knowing speech
are speechless
is the end of wisdom
silence?
ii
let me sense
the texture
of your silence
as the shifting moon
passes offstage
and heaven leads on
to midnight
let my fingertips
touch
the stillness
around us
adrift
after many voyages
I seek safe harbor
on your silent islandRoman Vase with Patina
Shall my words
stretched thin across the page
ever shimmer
with living opalescence
like the luster of light
upon the Roman vase
in the vestibule of my mind?
Glass
that has seen
twenty centuries pass
beneath the gray-green sea,
as the microns of patina
quietly spread
transmuting the surface
of the simple silica
to something wondrous
glowing with inner flame
vibrant from depths
Does the gloss
of all my words
form such a palimpsest
to be uncovered
and endowed
with meaning
or is it merely
a surface sheen
of verbiage
scattering sense
in all directions?Creation
I was the youngest kid
in the Yard
They said
“Betcha…
can’t make a Big Bang”
I did
By Golly—
Then there was Light
and all the rest of it
Galaxies, Stars
even a Black Hole
or two
Well, billions of them
but who’s counting?
Then
there was all this stuff
called Evolution
Before I knew it
I had this Universe
on My hands
Thank goodness
it’s vacation time
But, you know,
I wish now
I hadn’t banged
that Bang
Waiting
Who can imagine
the long solitude of bacteria
on our watery globe
3 billion years of loneliness
waiting for evolution
to stop by
and stir things up
It’s a long wait,
even for bacteria
who might not know
any better….
For more than 3 billion years Earth was inhabited
solely by single celled organisms
Anger not the GodsThis is a land
of ancient gods
They have not left this landscape
they reside in the anguish of the stones
in the gray bark of carob trees
and the dimness of karst caves,
They sigh in dry thorn stalks
on summer hillsides,
their breath hovers
in whirls of dust
This is an old, hard land
with a surfeit of memory
It does not take much
to stir passions
or memories
when the wind rustles
leaves in the olive groves
Tread lightly on the land
of ancient gods
To every poet, his Unicorn
O Unicorn among the cedars
To whom no magic charm can lead us W.H.Auden
Somewhere yet,
the Unicorn
awaits
in the darkling
of a tapestry glade
ultimate
of all desires
I too have sought
the Unicorn
since time was young
yearning
to sigh meaning
into words
wantonly sown
on a paper field
O creature
most mysterious,
ephemeral, innocent
patient and wise
speak softly,
blessed above beasts,
those magic words,
the last true poem
this world will ever know