Sketchbook  Helen Bar-Lev, IL

 

Free Verse Hardly A Forest Hardly a forest, the tallest tree a dwarf oak or lofty carob, this is a vast expanse of wheat fields interspersed with wildness, a mutual arrangement between man and nature to combine their most pleasant aspects Neither is it mountainous; low rounded hills and tels tell of ancient habitations and surely the land remembers Samson who must have strolled here then as we do this Sabbath, picked the mushrooms, smelled the blooms before his eyes were blinded by a devious Delilah There are ruins here and many caves dirt roads meander, one-laned and unpaved and crawl through landscape so lovely now this beginning of February dotted with anemones and every imaginable flower even the stones disappear amidst their brilliance We walk up a dirt road too narrow and muddy for even our small vehicle I sit on a stone near some nettles, look down the road, to villages glistening in the distance and don’t want to move My nature prefers taller trees a colder climate where breathing is easier but I am touched unexpectedly by this serenity, impossible to digest on first encounter A vision slips impossible through the threads of my thoughts, that it would be good to be here forever to sleep on a bed of flowers to wake up in the morning to food brought by benevolent spirits To build a house modest and invisible where I would be alone to live and eventually die always painless and in peace in this Shangri-la in this Garden of Eden in this Paradise discovered by chance on a Sabbath excursion Probably we shall never be able to find it again

 

Free Verse From This Desk From the desk at which I sit and bring beauty through these hands, this brush, onto the paper into the world, the corner of my eye observes the wind flipflop a tablecloth on the other side of my heart, a friend whose son is dying, one whose son had a breakdown during army reserve duty, another who has just had an unjust diagnosis, all poets, a plague on poets this past week it seems in my painting, human-free, the North abloom, mountains regal in the background, pine trees and peace sky blue with optimism ground green with eternity on the radio a six-year-old Mozart is wooing my heart whom do I fool? a world in pain paradise so close to a hostile border that, if you listen, you will surely hear the mortar shells falling am I permitted the peace which creativity gives yet compassion prevents? I sign the painting a month in the making and hurt for the world

 

 

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