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June 2001
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New York City
May 2002

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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