FLOWN
“A sight, an emotion creates
this wave in
the mind long before it
makes the words to fit in.”
--Virginia Woolf
When the Hong Kong Flu
of sixty-eight made another
Pass in seventy, claiming
my mother due to a lack of
Hospital beds, suddenly
everything slowed in the house,
In the neighborhood, I
was kept from danger--my father
Somehow had less time
to watch me, and so much lay
Empty, infected. There
may have been shortages but I
Didn’t notice. Yes, and
community pools, I remember
The one at the Y, was
closed. One day when my father
Was at work, I promised
myself I’d only cycle my Red
Royce Union around the
neighborhood, not stop and talk,
But, instead, I rode all
over Havertown, all the long roads,
Past shopping centers
and churches and the golf club,
I sliced through miles
of air, free as influenza, ascending
Up West Chester Pike past
places the buses went: past
Manoa and clear out to
Broomall and back through grief.
G. E.Schwartz__

_____________
WRITTEN BENEATH THE PEACE
BRIDGE
Broad gravel and scrap-metal
barges shove
The drift. Each wake twacks
the rip-rap bank.
A rearing tugboat streaks
past mergansers
Dabbling water-chestnut,
pinkish-beaked. Above,
Pigeons on steeleyed decks
neck-wrestled,
Piqued, oblivious to their
squabs that whined
And squealed in steel-ringed
nests, nursed
Up in the high struts.Opaque
brown particles
Swarm churning through
the river’s slowing tide.
That navy hoop of cormorant
can compose
A counter to this bulwark--an
adolescent osprey
Splayed wide, Greater
scaups--on the bridge’s
Side; it glows while through
the pale green
Flaked arches slide the
boats “Hassayampa,”
“William H. Latham,”
and “Niagara
Queen II”.
G. E. Schwartz__

CYCLES
I see a laundromat and
I think of my childhood, that idea
That you could throw your
clothes into a washer and dryer
For a few quarters, and
have them clean and warm within
Two hours seemed absolutely
incredible to me. That sense
Of wonder is still with
me, even as its joy is more subdued.
And what a space where
time slows down! Like sitting by
The water for hours, being
on a long train trip, the laziness
Of Sundays--things all
existing outside of frenzy. Here, I
Wait for clothes to be
wash and dried, and there’s nothing
To count but time passing
by with that rotation of a washing
Machine: some time to
red a book, engage in conversation,
Check phones, but mostly
everyone just has to wait. This
Is my
mono no aware,
my awareness of the all, a time of
Wistfulness of this journey,
like watching cherry blossoms
Fall--that shared experience,
watching the clothes whirl
Around while thinking
about life, the past and present
And possible futures,
what I can be, what I will never be
Again. And how everything--all
of it--is constantly changing.
G. E.Schwartz__


© Susan Weiman:IMG_9025
OUR MIGRANT IMPULSES
Leave this?
As ancients fled
from ice, who
Found fire, and the equator--or
failed to find
Among the slick root-ridge
stumblings? Swim
The up-draught of air
intoxicated as birds,
Mysteriously instructed
migrants? No ‘as’
Has had knowledge of this
drive who desolates
And awes and strives--not
epochal, not
Seasonal, only: once.
Now winds whip the
Trees. We sign in wonder
and flip but not
In the thinning branches
who have left forms
Known as trees forever.
We are left to the
Aloning power who gathers
us now (tossed,
tossing)
I sit in this tree. We sign in wonder
And flip. The gloaming
draws near. The sky
Port lets in pallor and
chill, leaf and stem,
Seal, soil is unthirsting.
And others gather.
The flocking, the high
homing in jetstream,
Stange ice-crudded, light-absorbed
ways:
Something of what we sense,
none of it known--
No rest, no place. The
summer power thrives,
Not drawing out, radiant,
fearsome, for far flight.
G. E.Schwartz__
