Max Reif: "Hitch-Hiker"

The hitch-hiker I
remember best
was someone you
might call a hobo.

Lord knows what he'd
been through, to receive
a gift that some folks get
who've borne so much.

He traveled light.
He owned a little pack,
a little dog;
that's all.

I drove for fifty miles
before he turned
his head to me
and said,

“I think
I'll get out here.
I like the way
the grass looks,
way up
on that hill.

The way the light
falls on it.”



"Hitch-Hiker" by Max Reif. © Max Reif. Text first published in The Mindful Word. Presented here by poet submission. To read more of Max Reif's writings, go to Faith of an Artist—The Writings of Max Reif.

Art credit: "Windmills on Grassy Hills," wallpaper from 1ms.net.

Max Reif: "To a Visionary Whose Name I'll Never Know"

This is to you, lady who smiled at me
as I came out of the subway at 14th Street

and walked down 6th Avenue in the winter of '74
having just arrived in New York. Gentle feathers

of snow had just begun falling from the black.
I felt myself taken into your eyes, and suddenly

was no longer a confused young man
wondering whether every next step was the right one,

but a light-being, love built into his cells,
leaning forward, poised to give.

Thirty-five years later
I still walk those tunnels of your eyes

down the line of your smile
toward that person you saw in me.



"To a Visionary Whose Name I'll Never Know" by Max Reif. First published in Tiferet: Literature, Art, & the Creative Spirit. Presented here by poet submission. To read more of Max Reif's writings, go to Faith of an Artist—The Writings of Max Reif.

Art credit: Untitled photograph of old New York City subway token, presumably by Eric Sandstrom, published in "Good for One Fare," The New York Times (1/30/2013).

Max Reif: "Still Point"

Leaving home
for work
each day

I hear the trees
say "What’s your hurry?"

Rooted, they
don’t understand

how in my world
we have to rush
to keep in step.

I haven’t even time
to stop and tell them
how on weekends, too,
schedules wait
like nets.

It’s only on a sick day
when I have to venture out
to pick up medicine

that I understand the trees,
there in all their fullness
in a world unpatterned

full of moments,
full of spaces,
every space
a choice.

This day
has not
been turned yet
on the lathe

this day
lies open, light
and shadow. Breath
fills the body easily.
I step

into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover.

"Still Point" by Max Reif. Text as published in Everyday Music: Recent Poems. © 2009 Max Reif. Used with permission of the poet. To read more of Max Reif's writings, go to Faith of an Artist—The Writings of Max Reif.

Art credit: Untitled photograph uploaded May 1, 2013, by Eric Benjamin.