B.Z. Niditch

This kid brother
of a friend
I saw on a park bench
by Boston Common
in the Sixties
mooching
and mooching off
his girlfriend
which I did not dig
but had indignation
because the woman
deserved better
and liked to hear me
play sax
as the couple became
flower children
and moved out
to Frisco
and I became
in a sense a Beat
and received a letter
from the woman
who sang folk songs
in a club with Joan Baez
saying she had to leave
the guy
who once beat her up
for drugs
and I sent her money
to return
because I worked hard
to earn money
for music lessons
after school
in an ice cream factory
with rubber boots
under my feet
full of water,
the guy had to go
to Nam
and was missing in action
she shortly married
a musician in my band
and last weekend
invited me to play
in a gig
when memory
was no fault in my life
and she told the audience
in song and parable
about me.

Reminding ourselves
to capture
first light
before the dog days
along weathered trees
are swollen with pine nuts
tangled leaves
and Autumn’s brightness,
when a hundred nests
of squirrels and hornets
hide their first hours
in the dry meadows
on greensward grass
at day break
keeping us quiet
under a solitary sun
by a stammering wind
off the sea coast
as gulls swirl
in the sky’s blue veils.

Rootless
from frozen solitude
echoes stir
a downed
enfant terrible
as a ballerina
with a vast leap
in less
than lyrical poise
circles round
an unmade day bed
admiting us
to the nursery room
with the sofa rug
of twin swans
drenched
by the newly watered
Iris vase
multiplying confusion
along the fish tank
a breath away
in a possible whirling
dance macabre
of a future Salome.

In the redolent
snow kisses
the relief muted
at a posthoumous season
incognito you carry
your sax
by a surprising storm
and drang
stiffened by fishers
of buried ice
your carmelized socks
fallen in liquid silence
by your wet shadow
consumed by sunshine
over the long steppes
traced by a red scarfed
poet glazed
by falling birds
on an absent sky

The exiled poet
without papers
passport
or green card
only wth a letter
from Ginsburg
gets into the cab,
hears Coltrane riffs
and the blues,
it starts to snow
on the windshield
tiny flakes
like stolen kisses,
the sky is absent
and the fare rises
the hungry poet
jumps out of the taxi
on asphalt streets
hitches for a ride
on moonstruck miles
a surrealist
with action paintings
in her car
picks up the poet
who goes to the university
Ginsburg is there
with kisses for us.