The Shells of Our Solitude

art by Shelley Yampolsky

Inside the shells
of our solitude
edges and contours
disappear.
What use is skin
without an other
leaning in.

When we are free
to love again
the deep
dark pool of me
will flow into
the deep dark pool of you
like water going home
into the sea.

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The Tree

Years since it bore an apricot. Many more since it bore many. Half the trunk rotted, fallen, gathered in the windrows by the field. On mossy branches raspberries grow, making rainbows. But every spring, around my mother's yahrzeit it remembers (as do I) and blossoms in the palest pinks fiercely, profusely, fragile. Nothing will come of it, as nothing comes of me, except forgetting, except small bits of me riding away on petals on the wind.

Something About Spring

There's something about spring.... Trees and shrubs madly competing to get all their leaves out first, big, fat, lush; grass turning too green, then being outdone by the too-yellow of a carpet of dandelion; tulips burning up the near-empty garden beds with hues of deep purple and barnfire reds. It's all somehow too much. And people, too, popping out of their sealed houses, shivering in thin shirts and sandals with grim determination, trying to ignore the hard spring breeze. In all that rushing towards new life, that frenzy seemingly shared by all living things, with the swallows repairing last year's nests, and the Canada Geese squatting in the middle of the hayfield, or even by the side of the road to get the new crop of children out ... in all that there is also denial, a forgetting of what fails to return, what has quietly ceased during autumn and winter: plants that went underground and have failed to rise again, animals whose last breath rode away on the stiff winds of

Translation

"Parade of Planets," George Abramishvili You raise your hand; is it to strike me or to let your fingers learn the curve my cheekbones make? You say Hello, and I am lost to know whether you mean Hello, I’m here, Hineini, or you mean Hell, no, don’t bother me, I’m busy, what would I want with you. Always I know to read the horses’ neighs, the dog’s tail when it wags, the cat’s meow (it always means, where’s dinner?); I can read the rabbit tracks in snow, the tree leaves in the spring, the tea leaves in the cup; seasons, snowstorms, turnips and tulips wanting water. Sometimes I even read the mind of God. Only the words and gestures humans make I cannot fathom when they aim for me. Is there a dictionary, a translation guide that helps explain motions and moves the hearts of other people make in this direction? What does it mean? What say you? Who are you? Who am I? Somewhere between these questions is the answer. Words as words are easy. Words from you to him, t

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