For the inner ear, the voice of the ves­sel of silence is an embrace
felt by an infi­nite num­ber of scribes.
It is my wish to offer here an oasis of present day poetic
pens.

Each month i shall invite new poets to breathe with, and they in
turn will bring guests of their own.

Poetry Cor­ner at TIFERET has evolved out of Donna Stein’s
enthu­si­asm to nur­ture the spirit of beauty in all its forms.

silent lotus

Sep­tem­ber 2010 Silent Lotus’ Selected
Poets’

Mar­got Far­ring­ton

and her guest Carol Peters

Sal­iba Sarsar

and his guest David Sten Herrstrom

Mar­got
Farrington

Wild Ducks

Dis­so­nant music of come-hither recalls three I’d
for­got­ten: decoy carvers named Heissler, Fitz­patrick,
and Eng­lish. Men hon­ing shapes to spells to lure down
hen and drake. Look how the flock low­ers, as one
body will seek another. Love is part cun­ning,
part care. Does a decoy carver destroy or
pre­serve? Yes, says a voice. And Yes.

Have you heard the land­ing song? In air it skirls
and in water fizzes. Notes of olive or yel­low.
Red notes, maybe. Or black. What­ever color, the
skim­ming feet make bevies of bub­bles: eyes
infi­nite and wise and I think they imag­ine me bliss­ful,
buoy­ant in the womb before I’m put through my
his­tory, before I stand in front of stones to read my
par­ents’ names in gran­ite. Their graves close to those of
Heissler, Fitz­patrick, and Eng­lish. Names of mak­ers.
Names whose link­age brings me wist­ful music.
And I won­der if you’ve heard the

flu­ent dead speak­ing Brant? Did you get the
let­ter in Mer­ganser? Or was the trans­la­tion lost?
Today the guns are silent. Across the pond
comes long­ing. Lis­ten. Your
name is chang­ing shape. At times sun­lit
and soli­tary, at times dark and among oth­ers.
Watch water brim, see it sil­ver and
shiver and touch both shores.

Azure

The sky hides a puz­zle. You must be a
miss­ing bit. Dropped by heaven-hand to
beguile and lead me astray.
Where are we going? White vio­let, you say.
Why haven’t I lived my life
riv­eted to your flut­ter? You beat as if you
knew my heart by heart. Mem­o­rized every
sec­ond that every gave me joy.
Where are we going?
Old field cinque­foil, you answer.
Yel­low, yel­low, yel­low, calls a bird
inti­mate with the plan. You rise, dip towards
shore­line where sea enfolds sky. Jut of
coast cuffed with stone and
sleeved by blue: wild flag in bloom.
Was there a thing called win­ter?
Sorrow-kite, break string and fly.
I am an iris among irises
loft­ing into but­ter­fly and we are
firmly under sail and I have left two feet
ashore. Farewell, faith­ful ser­vants who
car­ried me thus far.

*azure — a small blue but­ter­fly com­mon in the
Northeast

Mar­got Farrington’s sec­ond col­lec­tion is “Flares And Fath­oms” (Bright Hill Press). Far­ring­ton was a recip­i­ent of a Nor­ton Island fel­low­ship in 2009. An inter­view and read­ing of her poetry recorded early in 2010 may be accessed via Art On Air Inter­na­tional Radio.

Carol
Peters

Carol Peters reads & writes, walks & bikes, adores the out­doors, loves fam­ily & friends. Read her lat­est book: https://sites.google.com/site/apobizpress/books/sixty-some-2. Visit her blog: http://carolpeters.blogspot.com/. Carol lives in Hawaii & Charleston, is mov­ing to Argentina.

Sal­iba
Sarsar

WE

The cool hill­top air
caresses our soul.
Our warm embrace
ele­vates us to
the golden cres­cent as
we drift bliss­fully
into the blue sky
of tomor­row.
Wail­ing sirens
in the far,
bark­ing beasts
in the near,
halt our ascent,
our dream.
Love and peace
await…
another night,
another day.

TRANSFORMATION
for Jacob Landau

To a relent­less fire I awoke,
    awoke to touch only wet ashes,
     heaven’s tears cleans­ing souls
     in fear and awe
     ascend­ing Jacob’s ladder.

Toward liberty’s cross, I rushed
     rushed to freeze ham­mers, nails
     pierc­ing flesh, blood stop­ping
     mouths of dry skulls
     cry­ing out for jus­tice and peace.

With angelic joy, I soared
     soared with prophets lead­ing away
     from stum­bling, dark pits, and
     satanic wheels
     toward the New Jerusalem.

When will you learn
     to seek shel­ter in the shadow
     of God’s wings

Sal­iba Sarsar is Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent for Global Ini­tia­tives and Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Mon­mouth Uni­ver­sity. In addi­tion to his schol­arly works on the Mid­dle East, he is the author of two books of poetry. The first, titled Cross­winds, was pub­lished by Mellen Poetry Press. The poems included impres­sions of a teenager expe­ri­enc­ing Jerusalem under Jor­dan­ian and Israeli rule, and matur­ing in a land of “between war and peace.” The sec­ond, Seven Gates of Jerusalem, was pub­lished in Haifa by Kul-Shee in a bilin­gual (English/Arabic) edi­tion. It speaks with a trans-communal voice meant to redis­cover the essence of the human con­di­tion and direct its energy toward under­stand­ing ‘the other’ and the envi­ron­ment of which we are all a part. His indi­vid­ual poems have appeared in a vari­ety of venues, includ­ing the Mon­mouth Review, Upstate Mag­a­zine, Voice of the Shore, The New York Times, This Bro­ken Shore, and the Asbury Park Press.

David
Sten Herrstrom

HOW LIGHT FINDS LAST NIGHT’S LOVE

The moist body of light    that loves noth­ing
touches down on a black-furrowed field.

Fanned out, wings slow the body from flight.
We are like that     as we slope through love.

Just wake    wake to one state of the world:
light bathing naked in the black shal­lows of a field.

And all things look at us.     We have made love
like light con­tin­u­ally used up in mak­ing the world.

Dis­cov­ered by a brief bright prov­i­dence
we can say it     truly we live in Paradise.

David Sten Herrstrom, a res­i­dent of Roo­sevelt, NJ, is a poet, writer, and lec­turer. His poems have appeared in numer­ous mag­a­zines, such as Colum­bia: A Jour­nal of Lit­er­a­ture & Art, Nim­rod, and US1 Work­sheets, and his hyper­text poems are avail­able on the web at The New River: a Jour­nal of Dig­i­tal Writ­ing & Art. He has pub­lished two books, includ­ing Jonah’s Dis­ap­pear­ance, a sequence of poems with draw­ings by Jacob Lan­dau. In addi­tion, he wrote the libretto for Mark Zuckerman’s opera, The Out­law and the King: David and Saul, A Tragedy, which has been per­formed in con­cert ver­sion at Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity. Recip­i­ent of a Poetry Fel­low­ship from the NJ State Coun­cil on the Arts and a Nim­rod prize, his poems have been selected for the Colum­bia 40th Issue Ret­ro­spec­tive and nom­i­nated for a Push­cart Prize. He has given read­ings in many venues, includ­ing the Dodge Poetry Fes­ti­val and Mon­mouth Uni­ver­sity. Since mov­ing to Roo­sevelt in 1975, he has served on the Board of Edu­ca­tion and was a found­ing board mem­ber of the Roo­sevelt Arts Project, serv­ing for over 15 years as Pres­i­dent. He is also pres­i­dent of the Jacob Lan­dau Insti­tute. He holds a doc­tor­ate in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture from New York Uni­ver­sity, has taught at Queens Col­lege, and is cur­rently Adjunct Pro­fes­sor at Mon­mouth University.

Poetry Cor­ner Monthly Archives

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … AUGUST 2010

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … JUNE 2010

POETRY
CORNER by silent lotus … MAY 2010