Post by moira on Oct 23, 2008 23:56:51 GMT 2
Ricky Rapoport Friesem
was born in Canada and moved to Israel with her scientist husband and three sons in 1972. For 25 years she worked as a journalist, editor and documentary filmmaker for Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, whose Communications Department she headed for over a decade. Her prize-winning poetry has appeared in Moment, Ariga and Poetica. In 2006, her collection: (parentheses) poems for the 21st century was published in Rehovot, Israel and was recently awarded First Prize in Writer’s Digest 2007 International Self-Published Book Awards competition.
birth song
The compass needle
swung and quivered
to a halt
and you were born
my child
into this land
you didn’t choose
bound in bordered space
before the cord was cut
and you could cry
I’m here!
call it love
My eyes are fixed on your
wet head that bobs upon
the waves then disappears
forever it seems before
I will you up. I hold my breath
until at last I see you slicing
towards me with long even strokes.
I watch as you rise
from the sea, shake off a
shimmering water cape, and
with a splash fall back into the
ambush of the undertow.
I gasp. You rise again,
pull free this time and with
an awkward moonman gait
lunge to the shore where
I stand waiting for you on the sand,
reborn .
she’ll be coming back from india
She’ll be coming back from India
in a blaze of jungle color
hair let loose, a tangled halo
henna-brushed copper-brown.
She’ll be striding in flat sandals
trailing scarves of flashy fuchsia,
with each step, a peel of silver
from the rings upon her toes.
She’ll fling petals as we greet her
wrap us in soft silk embraces
clothe us in the scent of jasmine
incense, sandalwood and myrrh.
She’ll put on a show to please us
but it won’t succeed in hiding
the new sadness in her dark eyes,
looking inwards, looking back.
Read more by and about this poet here:
rickyfriesem.com/default.aspx