"Driving to the MLK synagogue service" and "August Heat and Chinese Chives"
Driving to the MLK synagogue service
An autumn leaf skitters across the road
trees with lines of blues reach and cry
American flags hung in the wet breeze
a day with wet rain warm as spring
I look out the window at an old Victorian
hands trembling on the wheel
my daughter places her hand over mine
"You can tell me anything"
we're on the way to synagogue where
I will sing "Woke Up This Morning With
My Mind On Freedom"
August Heat and Chinese Chives
There is enough time, sometimes. The chairs grow light and float, grow heavy with the humid hands of August. We were given Chinese chives. They are raw and fresh, a sharp tang that bites the tongue. How many more years? And today a friend had a funeral. I didn't go, but thought of his deep voice, his pearls. There is sometimes the edge of enough. We leap into the lake, seaweed brushes my lips. I was wanting health, and got some of it, a full moon the night we played "What A Difference A Day Made" and the notes caught me in deep muteness, crying. If I can only hang on in the moonlight, leaping with our inventions on the cool dark roads. Still, some days I wait in the chair that floats, the one that grows heavy, and I write notes to those who are in great danger.
Judy Katz-Levine has a new book out, The Everything Saint, available from Amazon and published by WordTech Communications. Her other books include Ocarina and When The Arms Of Our Dreams Embrace. A chapbook, When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast, emphasizes her work in jazz. Poems and translations have appeared recently in Salamander, Blue Unicorn, Ibbetson Street, Miriam's Well, Writing In A Woman's Voice, and Peacock Journal Anthology. Also a jazz flutist, she enjoys playing jam sessions in the Boston area.
