Four Poems | Ron Friedman
POETRY
7/1/20244 min read
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.