Issue 15

Summer 2003

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 and one grandson. 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.

I was recently appointed Editor in Chief of the annual “ Voices Israel Anthology”

 

Poet/Imposter

I am the imposter
within the poet
imposing on your innermost
tweaking at your heartstrings
in the heat of the summer
grinning to see
how you react
to my perceived
oh-so-serious façade

a malevolent imp
making free
with others' emotions
positing good faith
laughing behind the bushes

crying to myself
when evening falls.

 

My Granddaughter wakes

Deep within her blanket
my granddaughter stirs
stretching
sighs a farewell
to her dream

she speaks quiet words
to someone
elsewhere
far off,

she tenses fingers
legs and toes
yawns,
most ladylike,
blinks her eyes
and
relapses again
to a soft delight
of semi-slumber

expectant,
outside
the green dawning
of her world
awaits

 

Dateline: Iraq

Awash
in a tide rage of print
this month's war
hits the headlines

transported by transistor
cell-phoned and formulated
for a two minute spot
the rockets
flare proud
burst
in living color
and the roar
of battle echoes
into our living room
cozy viewing spot
for the dying
of the occasional
inevitable death
among the rubble

thus
the one-eyed,
flicker-eyed,
teli-idol
mouths his tidings
among the tea cups,
telling it how it is
and well-groomed
arbiters of history
immaculate,
and
ever-so-articulate
seize the photo-op

O come dance with me
the wheel-chair waltz
for legless children
before we break
for the commercials.

 

Saints and sinner

She will rise with the tide
from a silver backed sea
writhing with sea-wracked wraiths
beyond the dumbfounded elms
in the eye of a hawthorn moon
loveless as in her beginnings
beside the ringing bells of blackness
and the three terrible towers
whence comes the globular man
in his grey pin-stripe suit
he of the rolled trouser cuffs
with cows for comfort
pigs for pardon
and a coopful of roosters
for repentance

here will she come
with tantalizing steps
seeking sable communion
with a pack and parcel
of long since sinned-out
scrotum-swinging saints
to find a shriven salvation
under a pin-wheeling sky
of dervish constellations

when cosmos meets cosmos
even galaxies weep for joy
in the act of creation.

Storks

at dusk
a stork speckled sky

storks are flying
to the northlands
as their generations
have taught them

light fades
as silk
to evening

smooth sleek gliders
homing to the darkling woods
where secrets sleep
with the storks.

 

 

© Tom Berman

 

 

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