Four Poems | Ron Friedman

Origin in Time Lapse

The stage is dark

curtains open.

A cymbal smash

and a spotlight

ignites a body

curled like a fiddlehead

fern before opening.

Arms extend out

and up till the

figure rises, cartwheels,

somersaults as if

scripted, a sole

organism, a cell,

with a nucleus following

directions from its RNA

translated by a ribosome

in a gooey cytoplasm held

In a membrane, shaped

by protein struts.

Back to the middle,

lights go out.

It is pitch black.

Coltrane's Ascension begins to

find its way with

no moonlight, until

the dark figure,

in black body leotard

appears again,

but this time,

unfolds, steps forward,

spins right.

A second arc of light

reveals a duplicate.

Now two

spin in unison.

A film screen drops

behind the dancers.

Time lapse video

in lush greens and blues

fungi in forests

around the world

luminesces the stage.

An insect flies past

in search of

a meal.

A Fiction

Don’t challenge this story.

It is fiction.

Once while at the sea

a hand appeared through

the fog and surf.

You reached out

locked grips, pulled

until you heard,

You saved my life.

A head, just

above the waterline,

started to take

the shape of

a whale with legs

used to embrace

captured prey

in the desert

that was an ocean.

Beneath the sands,

bones stretched sixty

five feet twisted

like a yellow

magnetic ribbon, flown

like a kite

pulled by a girl

with long legs

pigtails, dark eyebrows.

She becomes your mother.

You are born

to this fiction.

You speak a

language understood by all.

Your stories are

bent, retold, believed.

Beneath the desert,

your bones grow

longer with roots.

At the surface,

leaves sprout, suck

light and water.

Fruit is formed.

Seeds fall to

the ground.

You are complete.

The desert becomes

A sea once again.

The Kingfisher of India

A yoyo champion is

displaying his collection.

Multicolored black and blues,

red and yellows,

after the storm

rainbows on his

shelf by the

window where an

easy chair sits

provides a view outside.

Purple clematis grows

later in the season

honeysuckle fills the air.

He is too comfortable

to care his

teapot is whistling.

He is back on stage

walking the dog,

the sleeper,

rocking the baby.

He knows the next round

will bring out the world’s

best yoyo artists.

He has prepared new moves

beyond the matrix,

beyond the trapeze,

beyond the no named

tricks he saw

while walking streets

last night in Budapest.

He had been

in love with

a figure skater

who moved

across the ice

like a scissor tailed

hummingbird in blue and red.

Her glide away

and back again

with the full twists

made him think of his trick.

He would replicate

her glides, her

toe loops, her spins,

the tension between the blades

and ice like

tension on his string.

As long as she glided

away and returned

he knew it

was perfect as long

as the string held.

And that was the key,

introduce a new string,

one more tenacious

than those of early days.

One with a hollow

like the steel blade

edges of her skates.

It would remain

secret yet unbreakable,

it would shimmer

in the spotlights

when he performed

hoping she would realize,

it was her on the ice

that created these

shining moments

and allowed him

to mimic her intricacies,

her flashes of color,

her blue plumage

feathered like the

kingfisher of India.

It would be up to the judges to decide

if an unbreakable string was legal.

They would only

have a few minutes

To decide if love

could continue

coming and going

gliding on ice

or when jumping

high leaving contact

with the strings,

would gravity and

counterweights rule the day.

I am this Dream

What do I say about a dream

That was me?

I was the road, the poolhouse,

the air that carried the car

in flight through the ether

to crash through

the roof into the seven

feet of water

and the hole in the wall where

a body exploded through

the windshield into

the adjoining room.

It was me first on the scene,

extracting wounded bodies

from the submerged car..

My words echoed through

the building to call rescue.

I was the body

in the adjoining room

bones eschew but alive,

placed on a backboard

by fire and rescue, carried

up the stairs, placed gently

in the ambulance. I was

the man with the black coat

and yellow helmet, the number

seven fluorescent in the night.

I was the crowd that gathered,

the onlookers that gawked

at the hole through the skylight,

and ran off

with the cash we had found

strewn about the walkways.

It was not summer nor winter.

There were stars in the sky.

I was the lack of explanation.

Ron grew up on a farm in rural NJ. He was the eldest son in a family of 5 kids, the others being 2 brothers and 2 sisters. He attended the local Clarksburg six-room schoolhouse grades 1-3 before moving on to the newer and larger facility for grades 4 through 8. Summers were filled with bicycle riding, hikes through the woodlands, endless softball games with nearby kids, and swimming at a local community pool as well as jaunts to the Jersey shore. Childhood passed easily until a fire destroyed the family poultry farm in the 1960's throwing the family into a chaotic period. Years later he graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Literature and Anthropology. He worked various jobs that included building log cabins, leading teenagers on canoe trips to Maine, Nova Scotia, and Canada. Back on the farm he created Paint Island Nursery growing tree and flowering plants. This led to the creation of the Paint Island Poetry Festival which had poets from throughout the region attend full-day poetry events with readings and storytelling.