Richard Schiffman: "Late March"

Again the trees remembered
to make leaves.
In the forest of their recollection
many birds returned
singing.
They sang, they sang
because they forgave themselves
the winter, and all that remained
still bitter.
Yet it was early spring,
when the days were touch and go,
and a late snow could nip a shoot,
or freeze a fledgling in its nest.
And where would we be then?
But that’s not the point.
Do you think the magpie doesn’t know
that its chicks are at risk,
or the peach trees, their too-frail blossoms,
the new-awakened bees, all that is
incipient within us?
We know, but we can’t help ourselves
any more than they can,
any more than the earth can
stop hurtling through the night
of its own absence.
Must be something in the sap,
the blood, a force like gravity,
a trick called memory.
You name it. Or leave it nameless
that’s better—
how something returns
and keeps on returning
through a gap,
through a dimensional gate,
through a tear in the veil.
And there it is again.
Another spring.
To woo loss into song.

"Late March" by Richard Schiffman, from Grey Sparrow Journal (Winter, 2015). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Photograph of Australian magpie-lark chicks by Stephen Michael Barnett from Darwin, Australia.

 

Richard Schiffman: "Gray Scale"

Nobody loves such days,
everything smudged in powdered lead,
the whites all off, the blacks dull
like the bad side of a mirror.
Yet in a world of shadows
what matters are not the highlights
but the shades of grays.
This river, for instance, a sooty snake
mirroring an oatmeal sky.
But watch it eddy and swirl,
and gradually the lead turns silver, begins
to blaze from within, as if begging the sun
to bust out of its straight-jacket.
And shine. Which the sun very nearly does.
But in the end, it can’t be bothered.
It says, Sparkle yourself.
And eventually we do. Van Gogh returns
to the sea-light of his youth.
Sews the ear back on.
Trades his magentas and cyans
for a # 2 pencil. It is all in the shading,
he realizes. The pursuit of raging hues
was madness. God, no longer
in the rainbowed flame,
but in this wan, uncertain earthlight:
this almost-shimmer on a river.
Whatever plain brown paper wrapper
the day comes in.

"Gray Scale" by Richard Schiffman. Text as published in Grey Sparrow Journal (Summer 2014). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "The river in black and white," photograph taken on May 1, 2010, by R Casey.

Richard Schiffman: "Before Language"

Up from the fountain

the babble of children,

drenched with surprise. Alive!

The rain of their syllables

does not strain to speech,

their glottal whoops and yells

never jell to full-fledged

words or phrases.

Parents hover bird-like

by their brood. Parents fan

and fan their little flames.

And I, alone, the childless one,

sit purposeless, yet not in vain.

Before language was, the rain.

Children’s voices pouring

from the sky. I close my eyes

and let it wash my dust.

"Before Language" by Richard Schiffman. Published in Sunstone Magazine (December 2012). Presented here by poet submission. © Richard Schiffman.

Art credit: "Silhouette Of A Splashing Child Playing In A Fountain of Water, Shreveport, Louisiana," photograph by Brian Buckner.

Richard Schiffman: "Hope (A Zen Perspective)"

Hope is not about some future meadow.
Hope is not a triumphal march toward some brighter,
bloodless field. Neither is it lighting a candle
or cursing the darkness or calling the glass half full.
It is this half-empty tumbler turning cartwheels
above the chasm. You, for example—
poised above your own private precipice,
bruised and bloodied, sifting through the ashes
of ten thousand burnt offerings.
Don’t scatter those ashes; don’t stuff the corpses
into body bags just yet. Don’t launch a fleet
of skyrockets to cheer up Gehenna. Don’t pretend
that you’re still hungry, like those battle-blind birds
pecking for seeds between the corpses.
Hope is not an appetite for this or that concocted future.
It is the present seeking itself, the present—
unlearning the past, agnostic of the future—
breathing, in its chains, like the sea.



"Hope" by Richard Schiffman. Published online by The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology and Culture, May 12, 2010. © Richard Schiffman.  

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color).

 

Richard Schiffman: "Smart Cookie"

 

(after Wallace Stevens)  

The fortune that you seek is in another cookie,

was my fortune. So I’ll be equally frank—the wisdom

that you covet is in another poem. The life that you desire  

is in a different universe. The cookie you are craving

is in another jar. The jar is buried somewhere in Tennessee.

Don’t even think of searching for it. If you found that jar,

everything would go kerflooey for a thousand miles around.

It is the jar of your fate in an alternate reality. Don’t even

think of living that life. Don’t even think of eating that cookie.

Be a smart cookie—eat what’s on your plate, not in some jar

in Tennessee. That’s my wisdom for today, though I know

it’s not what you were looking for.

"Smart Cookie" by Richard Schiffman. First published in Rosebud (date unknown).  

Photography credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer, found at this link and altered by curator (originally color).


 

Richard Schiffman: "Moth Koan"

You say that you are troubled
by your own thoughts. Listen,
even the moth casts a shadow
when it flies before the sun.
Do you think the sun is troubled,
or the ground, or the moth,
for that matter? No, what is
troubled is the shadow thinking
it’s the moth that has fallen
to the ground, where the sun
will never shine again. The moth
that understands this
flies straight to the sun.

"Moth Koan" by Richard Schiffman. Published in Rattle, Winter 2011.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Richard Schiffman: "Watching the Birdwatcher"

She peers through a pair of binoculars
into a treetop lit with day’s last blaze,
where some bird alights unseen by me.
Her gaze poised so tremulous and light,
as if resting upon a twig—looking, looking
at the bird that we don’t see. The bird in the tree,
and the seer of the bird sharing for the stainless present
the same slender branch. She stands stock-still.
Expecting nothing. Neither bird, nor bird watcher, nor air
are moving. Nor I, as I watch her, as she watches the bird—
all hung weightless and timeless and spaceless. Perched
upon this dimensionless brink. The twig could not bear
any more load than this bare awareness. If, therefore,
you would not spook the bird, nor snap the twig,
nor shatter this spun glass globe of air, then alight upon
the world like air, like breath. And do not linger any longer
than this bird watcher who now strolls off, the bird still hidden,
still lost in shadow. Forgetting the bird, forgetting herself.
Dissolving like an apparition into twilight’s final bay.
Only this poem still holding on. Foolish poem
grasping at the ungraspable world.

"Watching the Birdwatcher" by Richard Schiffman. First published in In Posse Review, Issue 25.

Photograph: Detail from "Woman Birdwatching" by Ariana Murphy (originally color).