Sample Poetry
The Presence of Trees
Slowly, I am remembering
the language of
awe,
how to take in,
say,
the
living complexity of a tree
its
gnarled trunk,
its ragged
bark,
the way its leafy canopy
filters
sunlight
down to the brown
carpeted ground,
the way the wind bends my heart
to the exquisite
presence of trees
the forest that calls to me as deeply
as I breathe,
as though the woods were
marrow of my bone as though
I myself were tree, a
breathing, reaching
arc of the larger canopy
beside a brook
bubbling to foam
like the one
deep in these woods,
that calls
that whispers home.
. . . Michael S. Glaser
From: Before the Hands
also in: in Between Earth
and Sky, by Nalini M. Nadkarni (University of California Press), 2008
Tree Magic, [CD anthology}
Spring 2005 SunShine Press (copyrighted,
please do not use without permission)
Angles of Sunlight
As I read Zen in the morning,
my young daughter leaves her bed
and lies next to me on the sofa
where sunlight angles through the window.
In half-sleep, her brown eyes
stare off at the large oak
unleaving in front of the house.
I cup her head in the palm of my
hand,
feel the chambers of my heart fill and
empty,
fill
and empty like the words on the page fill
my spirit like the air in her purple
balloon
like the breath of her lungs as her chest
rises and falls like the leaves on that tree
dancing in the wind and knowing
as they know,
something important
about attachment,
about
letting go.
.
. . .Michael S. Glaser
From Being a Father
(copyrighted, please do not
use without permission)
The Economy of Days
To want, to have, to do--
the verbs I live
in perpetual unrest.
How difficult to be--
to embrace the homely
details of my days
to open my heart
to the flow
of this amphibious life,
to trust in the motion toward
as a fish trusts
the river at its gills,
to
trust in this journey,
to swim,
to be still.
. . . .Michael S. Glaser
from: Fire Before the Hands
previously
appeared in Turning Wheel
copyrighted (please do not use without
permission)
Epithalamion
May your names remain songs
on each other's lips, and your days
dance like crystal in sunlight
as you celebrate a rainbow
of everything that is beautiful
and wondrous and new.
May laughter lace
the rivers of your lives
and each breath remind you
that the bread you share
comes from the earth
which bonds us all.
And when you return home
each evening, may you find there
a Sabbath of rest and peace
where you are free to choose
the place of your own kneeling,
where you worship at the edge
of each other's open door.
….Michael S. Glaser
copyrighted
(please do not use without
permission)
Letter to My Fifth Grade Teacher
Dear Miss Lorenz:
I 'm writing because
I was remembering you today,
how soft and kind
your voice was and how your eyes
sparkled
with laughter and light
which is why I wanted to impress you
and
why I was so afraid of spelling
where I knew you
would discover
I
was just another stupid kid.
And so,
on the day of the Big Spelling Test,
I
made that tiny piece of paper
and
when we put our books away,
I cupped it in my hand for use
only when absolutely necessary.
And you
moved up and down
the rows of our desks
pronouncing words
until
you
stopped next to me,
called
out a word and,
when everyone was writing,
reached
into my clenched fist,
took
the paper and then
walked
on.
You never made an
example of me,
never spoke to my parents about it,
or
even mentioned it to me.
And
you never treated me differently either,
just went on as though nothing had
happened.
But, of course, something did:
I never cheated again, Miss Lorenz.
I never stole another
candy bar
or money from the box
in
the top of my father’s dresser –
or from my mother's purse.
And I am writing to
thank you
for
treating me with dignity
even
as you caught me,
red-handed in sin.
It was as close to Grace
as I have ever been.
Perhaps
some day I'll know it once again.
. . . . Michael S. Glaser
From Disrupting Consensus
Previously appeared in Igniting Creativity in Gifted
Learners, K-6 Corwin Press, 2009
(copyrighted, please
do not use without permission)
Magnificat!
Tonight,
on holiday in Oxford, Bach's Magnificat.
The top windows of the Sheldonian
are open and music
surrounds
the building, drifting down Broad street
where
we walk in the cool of evening's extended light.
Eva races down the cobbled path,
leaps small tour jetés
on the
gravel. We try to hush her exuberance,
but
her grin is too full, the brightness
in
her eyes too light, too light . . . .
Watching her, I think of my
grandfather telling how
in
the old country, near Kiev, his family locked
their
doors and hid in the basement each Easter
when
Christians, leaving church, raced down
the
cobbled streets of the Jews, hurling stones
and dung at anyone
they saw, chanting
"Christ killers, Christ killers
. . . ."
This
evening, the inheritance of generations overwhelms:
the impossibility of even imagining all this,
years ago when grandfather, escaping
from Russia,
knocked
down a guard and ran for his life, for the life
of this very child, running with
abandon,
to the sounds of the Magnificat--
Gloria
Patri, Gloria Filio,
Gloria
et spiritui sancto.
. . . Michael S. Glaser
from: Being a Father
also published in The
Silenus and Outsiders,
Milkweed Editions, 1999
(copyrighted, please do not use without
permission)
