Poem

NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS
by Courtney Druz

Courtney Druz is a Jewish poet, mother, and former architect now living in New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in several publications including the current issue of Entelechy: Mind & Culture. She holds a BA in religious studies from Brown University and a MArch from the University of Pennsylvania.

It matters that this is true:
that pushing the stroller up the hill,
filled with sleeping boy and girl,
I thought about my muscles and
didn’t see the sky like smoke
at four o’clock, the drying trees
like black veins in the gray.

It matters that I thought
about my boots, that they were good,
and didn’t hear the red-eyed cars
rushing like wind, their terrible trumpets,
then the whisper of leaves.

All I saw, all at once,
black letters
stenciled on the pavement like a cut into stone,
the black showing through from a great distance:
NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS

Soledad, by Robert Hayden

(And I, I am no longer of that world)

Naked, he lies in the blinded room
chainsmoking, cradled by drugs, by jazz
as never by any lover's cradling flesh.

Miles Davis coolly blows for him:
O pena negra, sensual Flamenco blues;
the red clay foxfire voice of Lady Day

(lady of the pure black magnolias)
sobsings her sorrow and loss and fare you well,
dryweeps the pain his treacherous jailers

have released him from for a while.
His fears and his unfinished self
await him down in the anywhere streets.

He hides on the dark side of the moon,
takes refuge in a stained-glass cell,
flies to a clockless country of crystal.

Only the ghost of Lady Day knows where
he is. Only the music. And he swings
oh swings: beyond complete immortal now.


-Robert Hayden