Sister Wigberta

Dad hanging onto the pier

after his ship has sailed on

astounds his daughter--she is old, too--
Her father was a battleship.

How many times did she surrender
and see her little skiff dismembered!

Her sire was a man of war; she, a very quiet
pirate, has dressed in a black flag for years--

Now he's just a little buoy
floating on an unresponsive sea--

Aides prop him up; insignificance bobs.
Things won't be very different now

and quieter. Did she love him? She smiles--
The wreck of her life corresponds with a void.



This was first published in The Bryant Literary Review, Vol. 18, 2017

Before this poem was accepted by BLR, it was rejected by a magazine, the editor of which informed me that she had no desire to print a poem about sexual abuse. This interpretation was news to me, but I suppose it is possible. From my point of view, it's about a troubled father-daughter relationship, an abusive one, yes, but not necessarily a sexually abusive one. Sister Wigberta, by the way, was the name of a nun at the Thomas Morus Burse in Freiburg, Germany, where I lived 1965-1966. One of her main functions was to check our rooms periodically, in order to see to it that no student took down the obligatory cross from the wall. Sister Wigberta, where are you now?

For Trees on Tu B'Shevat

Your roots are literal and you

actually reach for the sky—

Each trunk is a capital “I”—

How peaceful it must be to be

first person singular figuratively!

Even one leaf banishes despair,

(metaphorically speaking, one strand

Of hair)--You never gray, you gold,

red, and brown; and, unlike ours,

season after season yours faithfully

comes back.  Fed by lifelines of

centuries-old, lithe and

organically willed-to-live veins,

leaves restore youth every spring.

Take a stand for challenged oaks

is not a command—Even when

gnawed during youth, yes, even if

crippled by long-since-dead deer,

oaks don’t need encouragement;

every one rises as high as it can.

Adult coiffures become canopies,

only 3% of sunlight reaches kids—

Yet saplings accept what they get,

and, most unlike us, never complain.

Tough love!  Yet If they received light

as they’d like, they’d grow too fast and

become deadly-thin.  I just read a book

(pages of tree flesh) that asserts roots

talk to each other via vast networks of

underground wires, fungi their go-betweens;

what do they say?  “Bagworms are

devouring us!  Constellate defenses,

neighbors!”  In one word: survive.

Choose life--Brothers, sisters, I am

a tree, you are a tree, long máy we

all flourish and seek sunlight yet!



This poem first appeared in The Deronda Review, Vol. 7, number 2