Our poet this month is Marc Widershien. Marc is the author of the lyrical memoir of Boston “The Life of All Worlds,” ( Ibbetson 2001). To find out more about Marc go to: http://www.marccreate.com  To have your poems considered send them via email to: poetry@thesomervillenews.com

Harvard Square–Inca Miracle

May Festival–Incas at Harvard Square,
making music in the quadrangle
under the cool graceful angles of the sun.
Come from the Andeans they pipe on the zampona
and strum the charango, their quena are flutes
made from the wing-bone of the condor.
Wancara, bombo, the hypnotic beat
of those supple drums beckons the ancients back.
Families gather, clap hands to the young people
who revel in the dance of the courting rites.
The music pleas for revolution and justice,
and the rhythms beat ever returning cadences,
then start again. Revolution, justice–that is the music’s plea.

Anniversary Song

“Oh how we danced on the night we were there…”
I sit at dusk by the keyboard
recreating the rickety song
that still lies under my finger tips
–with keys that still plunk out
bittersweet bars and cadences.                                                            
That was before my growth into the post
war years when my mother danced
in mulberry dappled gowns.
I have carried that melody
into my fifty-seven years.

My mother’s stone will replicate
my father’s, with facsimiles of the Lions
of David released from the granite entrails
of the plaque. Old themes still exist,
but embody an unmovable nirvana.
Now on the eve of my nuptial,
the song plays to no finality.
I envision purple gowns, tuxedos whirling, guests,
and the last of the Big Bands–all reeling their way out of the past.
Shellacked dance room floors-, wallflowers, sailors,
feet and arms fly toward abiding song.
May 27, 2001

Newport

Touro Synagogue, Newport

Meranos: pigs as the Spanish called them.
Not to be trusted these fake Catholics—
outcasts of Spain and Portugal.
Some landed in Holland, others here at Newport,
thanks to Roger Williams’ Code of Laws.
They were Sephardim with a flair for the mercantile.

Through the Palladian windows
the holy ark faces east toward Jerusalem.
On the bema flooring is a trap door,
inconspicuous like the Star of David I can’t find.
The twelve Ionic columns supporting the gallery
embody with subtlety the twelve lost tribes.