Lying still in late morning
A jaybird shrieks
through the courtyard.
The tinkling of windchines
overhead.
Poetry
Fall
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
A dying leaf falls
No! A yellow butterfly,
it flutters, then soars
8/29/24
Early Poetry 1959-1963
Johanna Freedman – Poetic Fragments
God bless this mis-happen fish;
And warn his foster brother
Not to be so wild.
Amen.
(Barbados – 1957?)
Searching for the soul
In Synergy with the compositions of Ed Barguiarena
When we listen to the sounds
emerging from the piano
their harmonies and passions
reverberate in our hearts
Peering inside the piano
we see hammers, bridges, dampers, strings
The hammers strike the strings
and sounds emerge
Yet the hammers and strings
cannot explain
the reverberation of those sounds
In the human heart
When the 17th century physician Thomas Browne
peered inside the human body
he saw organs and fluid
bones, muscles and tendons
He saw the heart
but expressed disappointment
that no matter how hard he searched
he could not find the soul
When we listen to hammers striking strings
the sounds reverberate in our hearts
They dip and soar
as do our souls
that no one can find
– Johanna Shapiro
Gladsong – for Raga
Tails of wheat
wagging beneath the teasing
of a wet wind
I have never been so happy
to know this creature,
this earth
Early Poetry 1965-1966
Dormitory
sun flickers. daylight beats hard at the pane,
grinning at my sleep-drenched eyes and calling
my name in yellow tones.
the flickering sun sings to me. loudly, for i lie
deep in seaweed waves, lulled by the blue-green tides.
but i will not rise to the golden-glowing,
green-struck, bell-ringing day and turn back
into my dreams to find the naked trees
that rose like steam from a crack in the pavement
and curled around the yearning air.
Early Poetry 1967-1971
In line
A boy,
generally tall and in most ways blond,
waits just ahead of me
in line.
(God knows why or for what
we’re waiting.
We wait only because the line
seems endless and forever durable.)
He smokes damply and quickly
between his teeth,
while I, whistling through my Kleenex,
read a poem upsidedown.
And we are next to each other
and very close.
Then he disappears
into his indefinite world
leaving behind delicate ashes
dropped from the orange end
of his tremulous cigarette.
He is gone and unimportant.
But I watch the ashes die
on the idle, vinyl floor
and I am frightened
because all I will ever know
of that boy
is the uncertain memory of his form
and the dust of his ashes.
October 12, 1966
Still A’Musing
by D and J Shapiro
Had idea of starting to re-write poetry with J, a reprise of our 1970-71 poetry book:
A
Daily ^ Musing
Norman Cousins Letter
One mark of the poet is his ability to react sensitively to a wide range of experiences. By this criterion, you are certainly a budding poet. Your lines deal with a wide variety of subject matter, but your perception is uniformly keen and compassionate.