Issues of Immortality
Price: $12.50
ISBN 978-1-7348866-1-0
64 pages
copyright©2021
New Bay Books LLC
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In Issues of Immortality, poems from the year of Covid-19, you feel the delicious urgency of life - in the rush of memories of what could have been when we were young ... and in the poet's ageless, and unquenchable, desire to live in her words.- Sandra Olivetti Martin, New Bay Books publisher. |
 
DEDICATION
To my unknown half-sister in Morocco,
engendered early in World War II, when my
dashing father—then a major—was stationed
in Morocco. In his V-mail home, he wrote how
he was billeted with a local “old Moroccan
housewife.” Years later, searching something
else in the attic of our Washington, D.C. house
on Macomb Street, a little photo slipped from
an old passport: a beautiful girl. My father
told me—“but not your mother”—that this
was indeed his former housekeeper and that
he sired a baby there: So I had a half-sister in
Morocco. He sent money there for years.
So we half-sisters have grown up but
forever unknown to each other and to the
world. I can only imagine she has enjoyed
a serious education and prospered all these
years in Morocco.
Just a glimpse into this wonderful little book...
Word Games
At this point words
are multisyllabic
to ward off
monosyllabic death
So as when picking
blackberries among
poison ivy and thorns
up the muddy lane
through the swamp
let us choose
the ripe with care
Avoid the thorns
Weather Report
Dead calm now, but you know
the hurricane is due.
Still, you rig the jib, cast off,
set sail from the harbor,
steer, sails full, past bouncing lights
on buoys until the wind—
The wind! the wind! More wind!
Best change course, return
toward fixed lights onshore,
the port, your pier, the floating dock—
But the pier is ripped apart—
Tethered boats break from
their moorings—
All swept away in the hurricane
you knew was due—
Still, you set sail—
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