The Value of One Thousand Words

I would trade
a thousand words at least
for the gift of looking
at a thing
and seeing it
plain
for what it is

And just so
trading what I have
for what I want
I'd give another thousand words
to get a peace that I could share
and still another thousand more
for the love that crosses gaps

My Comfort Zone

There are times

you imply

I am angry

stuck

in my ways

But it is simply

that we have not aged

to a borderless mass

You and I have retained

our sharp feelings

our instinct for distinct things

that we separately

cherish

Still, the times

when we are moving

in unison

where it is
we both wish to go
reach the limits

of my power to dream

Outdoor Poetry Season

Why "Outdoor Poetry Season?"

Because a lot of my poems begin with ideas that flowered outdoors. (Maybe "budded" would be a better description, but the word thuds on the ear.)

I can write a poem outdoors down to about 35 degrees. And get a little lower if I'm warmed up inside, but not ever below 30, thanks to the skiing trip I took with Buffy Aries and Danny Sobel some 45 or so years ago.

I frostbit a few fingers on that trip and they cause a little trouble off and on. I didn't learn to ski, either. But, on balance, it was a good trip. Both Buffy and Danny have given me much of value. Stuff worth more than the feeling in two or three fingers.

Jezebel

...is included in my book, Wild Once and Captured, available here, on the website of Teaching for Change.

Jezebel

You know when we met

I was a girl who loved

Baal for his rain and sweet water

and might love you for your youth and sweet breath.

I was the lure brought you unknowing

to Siddon where the sun skied mornings

above cedar hills, making jewels

on the crest of harbor swells.

Jezebel, chief’s daughter,

dreaming of many things,

but most often of the boy

to make my thighs quiver,

and none of the queen who later

would make my eyes run wet and salty.

You, pale desert boy, came,

hooked by my dreams,

with hair like raven’s wings

and prophet’s dreams of glory

and torturer’s dreams of pain

and a core of discontent

that you were born a shepherd.

I would have left my father’s hearth

to be your shepherdess, but for

your claim to something greater.

Our joyful dance pleased Baal, I know,

while you pretended grim shame before your god

who punished you like an angry father,

whom you yet embraced.

Were we to approach the other now,

would you wet your lips for this sweet Phoenician,

or would I be target for your rage

and angry accusations?

Do your loins remember

my dewy hills at dawn,

the little rivers of our wet fertility

dampening chest and thigh and mysteries?

Or would you pretend to a purity

that never pricked a gentile?

I am reconciled that I did not defy my father,

fight Ethbaal to love my Israelite shepherd boy.

 But I tried and tried

to come to you and cried,

Eli, your Jessie has come,

when I arrived, but there was no answer.

Had you waited for me? And misunderstood

my absence? Cursed me for rejecting you,

as you curse me now for turning

from the worship of your god

who demands more than other gods?

Now, Ethbaal is king in Tyre

and I am queen in Samaria

and spread my legs for Ahab,

the Israelite king, whom you daily damn.

I am thus, Queen Jezebel,

the living bond between Israel and Phoenicia,

which you condemn,

somehow forgetting the beauty

of Eli and Jessie,

as your one god does dismiss

the beauties of the many.

Your own voice,

which once whispered

sweetness in the courtyard

of the temple of Baal and laughed

in the sight of the sky goddess, Lady Nut,

your voice thunders and threatens,

slanders innocence, proclaims

dominion for one god above all gods,

                                                

dismissing dancing and worship before many.

My Eli, sweet tormented shepherd,

it is not our gods who invent unkindness,

but ourselves. This your lord, God, must know,

though you shrill otherwise,

and speak of a god blind to

the pools of kindness and courage

in foreign worshippers. How like the way

you deny the pool of love in which

we bathed and sung praise.

Do you remember the hart at sunrise

leaping our prostrate bodies?

I crept the shadows before that dawn

and startled when you arrived beside me.

And when you opened your robe,

I stepped inside your arms and

warm wrap of cotton while we sank

to earth, your lips sweet on mine,

your tongue a spring of wild water

plunging to my thirsty roots.

We moved slowly to the late calls of night birds,

quickening even as the owls hooted

slow caution, finishing to the sound

of hooves pounding, the hart

robust and wild above us and gone.

In the peace we found, I swear I heard

the great heart beating and felt the

throbbing pulse below,

just as it might have been

on the glorious first day.

I said the gods are smiling and you looked

at me and I said you are

smiling, too, and you said, this time, yes.

Do you have memory of this, or none?

Just as your god of many promises

remembers only those he wishes to keep?

Do you remember only that

which serves you now?

Are you now a perfect

acolyte of your god?

In your zeal you are become a destroyer,

first of earthly desire, and more besides.

Your wish to sip the wines of a hundred kingdoms

forgotten, your wish to sample the women

of every prince of every port

of the wide Phoenician sea,

lost. Gone as though left undreamt.

Or shriven within your heart,

consumed in the desert heat

of a different passion, your

service to your one god, who

requires devotion not in me to give.

You denounce Ahab, whom you call

the willing tool

of the prostitute of Tyre.

But Ahab leads as kings do.

 I stand not in his way. Ahab

ministers to the myriads

who worship whomever they will.

Ministers to the myriads who toil,

wear down like rocks in the stream,

who suffer hardship of drought,

and locust plagues,

and children born still

and children died young

and lovers claimed too soon. It is Ahab

who keeps the granaries full against famine,

Ahab who cares for the widow,

soothes the orphan,

Ahab who decrees no favorite

among the gods, who does not choose

among the gods

of Israelites, Ammonites, Edomites and Moabites.

And his people praise Ahab’s forbearance,

thank Ahab for his kindness,

while you call Ahab sinner.

In the King’s court, I have stood for

sandalmakers from Ammom,

stood for potters from Moab, saying to the King

these, also, are your people,

there should be no special privilege

for the Jews.

And the King has listened, then ruled as he would.

Ahab is no tool of Jezebel.

But Elijah Hanavi tells the story,

Jezebel the prostitute from Phoenicia

twists Ahab’s judgment and sins against

the one god.

And who listens?

The Hebrew zealots listen, and the hopeless,

aching for legends of more and better, listen,

and those who already bear hatred,

they listen. These have never seen the sea,

or the natural beauty of Phoenicia’s hills,

or the works of other men in Tyre. You

have made cause with these men

whose hard lives will change only as Ahab succeeds,

but the gifts of milk and honey they are promised

are the empty bribes of an intolerant god.

Who will protect Israel from Assyria?

 The lord, your god, has no chariots.

Ahab’s soldiers, Ammomites, Edomites,

Israelites, Moabites, these are Israel’s shield.

The soldiers of a kingdom of many customs and many faiths,

these will protect Israel,

as will Ahab, the king, whom you damn.

You have riled the Hebrews.

Enough riot through Samaria and all of Israel

 to kill all the priests of Baal. Now you flee to the Judean hills,

and claim that Jezebel sends vengeance racing after.

But it is I who remain behind.

I who calm Ahab,

Ahab who wishes to decree your death.

Seek no vengeance, I say to Ahab.

Only bring Elijah to explain this deed

in your court. But, yes, Eli, I also urged

Ahab on, saying hunt Hanavi,

he must answer to the families

of the lovers of other gods.

Yet I am split in pieces.

I am Ahab’s queen.

I am the princess who was Eli’s love.

I am the tears that Jessie cried

to the sun that rose in Eli’s face

in his wandering east.

I am those tears springing fresh today

from Jezebel’s eyes.

I hear, Eli, I am to die in the street,

torn to pieces by hungry dogs.

Is this your curse? Does Elijah triumph here?

Will the story of Jezebel and Ahab be told

according to Elijah?

And what  will be the fruit that grows

from such stories?

Shepherd boy, know this,

Jessie will not flee the lies and sordid tales.

I am a chief’s daughter, Queen of Israel.

What you decree, may come, but Jezebel does not flee.

I remember you once had such a will

when we loved a lifetime ago.

The Princess and the So-called Pea*

Dearest Hans,

I ran into Snow the other day
at the Computers and the Kingdom
Conference, the seminar on
Databases and the Royal Records.
We had tea, after.

She's about the top
bureaucrat
in the Vale of Little People
and came to the conference
to catch up on the latest.

Boy, does she look good.
She's still a size 6 with a
complexion like cream.
There I was
looking like the King's blimp
beside her and the bags
'neath my eyes need a lift.

Anyway, she says "Hans is still telling
stories" and I'm sure that's paying
off for you,
but I gotta say,
the one about me and the pea,
that verges on slander.
You need a new tale.

There is no pea.
I know that you know.
There's just so many distractions.
Cedric keeps having his little affairs
and keeps saying,
it doesn't mean a thing.
But I'm tiring of the lies
and thinking
what's good for the gander...
never mind.

Ella is in the middle of
some sustained
teenage tantrum,
she thinks I'm a bitch,
and my sly, wicked boss
keeps giving me little food gifts
and asking, oh, so, innocently,
"does Belle want my job?"

It all runs through
my head, day after day,
night after night,
and my mattress is lumpy
and the sheets wavy and wrinkled
and my nerves send little messages--
no time for sleep,
you're falling behind.

So please, Hans,
no more about the pea.

Love,
Leah

P.S. And for cinder's sake,
stop calling me "princess,"
that game is so over.


The Princess and the So-called Pea

I understand the problem

with the princess and her pea,

which was not a pea at all,

but lumpy

as mattresses go,

waves and wrinkles,

bearable but for the other

vexations of her life,

not least of which were

rumors that she was

so awfully sensitive

and at fault for all the trouble

with her mother-in-law, the queen;

and then, the prince, always MIA,

with riding to hounds and

rolling in hay

and more trouble yet

with the young dauphine,

her daughter,

who needs,

says the queen,

some chores to teach her habits,

like marching to the royal tune,

like patience and grace

like grandmother’s;

and there’s all the costume changes,

the conservative suit for work,

the ball gowns and the opera glasses

and the hats, oy, the hats;

so when the day ends in the darkness

that precedes the day to come and the

darkness after that,
she can’t sleep; who could?
so much on her mind;

that’s why the waves and wrinkles

so disturb; she’s really no more

sensitive than you; just, OMG,

she wants her own roll

in the hay, just like the fucking prince.

*A cheap knock-off of Anne Sexton's radical take on fairy tales (later collected in her book, Transformations. Sexton was a great poet of the mid-20th Century, bawdy and beautiful. And, herself, a candle in the wind.