Barbara Lefcowitz Poetry

BLUE SNOW

Despite the blue patina

and the prospect of discovering

what grows below its deepest layers

I don’t want to risk descent

into the 10 foot snow dune

outside my front door,

the wind shifting its curves

so the dune becomes frozen surf

that parts to reveal

a pregnant belly dancer

in pre-dawn darkness

tinged violet in the weak sun–

which may be just a memory of sun.

I try to clear a path, using a dustpan,

shaggy broom, a few empty cans.

But why bother when I can admire from within

the intricate surface-glints,

strings of ice forming chains

for the solid gems beneath.

POCKETBOOKS

Back around 1928 when everyone wore hats

and women carried pocketbooks,

genuine alligator bags with gold clasps

big enough to hold lipsticks, powder

puffs and rouge, a stash of nickels for the subway,

perhaps even Lucky Strikes in jeweled cases,

Back around 1928 my grandma Annie

got her first silver fox shawl

with real fox-heads and paws at each end.

Rich cousin Bessie Shlansky

had a full-length sheared mink coat

and the upstairs neighbor wore beaver

with a matching hat, Rose from Albemarle Road

owned  Persian lamb plus a

leopard coat with a tam, what a zoo

when they  paraded together on Ocean Parkway

for the High Holidays.

Though hers was not a coat,

Annie  was proud at last to own fur

only a couple of decades after Ellis Island.

I don’t begrudge them their happiness

despite the flaunting of animal skins

back when Green referred to Greenhorns, the latest

immigrants, those  lucky enough to get through

before the gates of America shut

And poverty was just around the corner

the clouds in the Old Country

already tinged black.

HOLY STONE

The small white stone

I lifted from Jerusalem’s Old City

not far from the Wailing Wall

and quickly slipped into a pocket

joins upon my return

my many other free souvenirs

from the many places I’ve traveled

my Global Village of many-colored stones

tossed into a jar, not one stone

marked by place of origin

or geological tribe, nearly all

in contact but never fusing—

yet no conflicts or claims

of supremacy, so the holy stone

dominates no more than a

gray ridged stone from some place in Asia

or a cragged red one

I think I pilfered from Chaco Canyon.

Sometimes I shake the jar

just to make sure the nearly hidden

pebble-size  stones

rise briefly to the top.