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BEYOND
THE STETHOSCOPE
By DA Feinfeld
PROVENCE
WATER-COLORS (to Nancy Rifkin)
Water has no color, borrows mauve,
beryl, amber from the hills,
drips the
sky’s iris in layers.
There are
no borders: steeple and tree
tell your
hand how to move the pen
but not the
brush-hairs that slide
and cross
into unmapped brooks.
In
a tiny town-square you meet
a ray of afternoon
light, follow her
to the café,
where her bright hair sweeps
the black
chair-backs and zinc bar,
then settles
on the faces, all stained
blurred
orange from the sun.
Here, she
tells you, are no straight lines:
in water,
clear pastis blurs into cloud.
Your
brush touches a blood-drop
to the nap
of the paper, spurting
a single poppy
(gentil coq’liquot)
between gentian
and grass,
an iron-red
pledge of trust,
sign of deceit;
an unseen bird
chants that
girls are faithless
and men even
worse.
Black,
unblinking eye-spots
of sunflowers
trace the day,
lidded in
exploding yellow petals;
even the surprise
of your boots
over pebbles
will not draw
their rapt
stare from the sky.
The mountain
rises above the road,
scowling,
fierce-moustached in green;
his stone-ringed
mouth the line
of a village:
church and shop
mark his mute
gray lips.
At night he
pulls on a black beret,
sits in the
card game at Chez Marius
where hunched
men swap stories;
when talk
turns to the old times,
he slips you
one secret smile.
STEALING
HOME (Ebbets
Field, Brooklyn, early 1950’s)
That
last run the hardest—
reaching third
was easy
(at least
for Jackie), but now
each half-second
an edge, a brink.
He’d buck-and-wing
between
safety
of the base and the strip
where missed
steps mean the end.
Most times,
he’d stare
into the pitcher’s
head,
cool eyes
repeating I dare you,
and he’d swerve
like a king snake
coming off
a rock. One careless
catcher’s
toss, and his spikes
grabbed that
extra second, a night wind
mixing with
the dust whooshed ahead,
(Steal away,
steal away home,)
then crashing
leap, a hurl
past the threatening
tag.
A net of hands
tugged him
from
the river, across the line,
again one
roving brother home free.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
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