John Levy


Me Me Me


I look up at the slab of night, aware

of my allotment of them. I have not been
on earth long, compared to some

mountains, for example. I have no memory

of being a fetus, just as I imagine
I’ll have no memory of being dead.

I am a thread, or less than one, in any

cosmic accounting (shall we
quibble rather than squabble?). A line

break

in an aerial photo I imagine taking of
where sea meets shore

allows me to imagine I’m flying, as I did

in at least one dream I remember.
I flew over a Greek village, Meligalas.

Stars are the sleep of nobody.



Zoe from Minneapolis


But if I could be calm
and grieve in this poem
for my mother. Mom,

whose name Zoe was uncommon
in 1923, when she was born and
still

rare enough so that for my first
20 years I didn’t know any other
Zoe. I stand within how her name

sounds.



Coastline


I’ve been bumblebee and
a bumblebee of lead,

shout and vacuum, blackboard
and moonless

sky,

stunt
and crumbling

autumn

leaf, I’ve been
born

and a piece of
music, born

and daybreak, born

and tree
stump, been grief

and coastline 



No Rider (1985)


on a storm-darkened narrow road
in the Taygetos Mountains to the east of Kalamata
we were the only car driving through the downpour

heading up through the dark on the sleek
wet road with drenched wall of rock to our left

and lightning flashing the trees to our right
into branching ghosts
when a big white horse galloped down toward us

in the center of the road, passed us speeding down

charging more powerfully than reality



With Built-in Dreams


I like to think of myself as a colorful but small
mortal near the daily

quicksand. I like to think of myself

free at last, an enthusiast,
filling my gratitude

journal 

with collages. I like being alive, a rope
nearby for someone to throw me when I’m halfway

down in the quicksand. I

think the most accurate epitaph for me will be:
He bought books.

My daily aspirations, simple

as they are, include repeated
memories─monuments, really,

in an otherwise flattened past.



Olivia Blossom Levy, 5/2/22
 
 
If you could speak to us today, you would be wrong
if you remarked, “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
 
I’m writing this on May the first, 2022, a day, Olivia, you
won’t remember (unless you’re one of those people
 
who do remember their birth, their first and second
day on Earth, and
 
how thrilled their parents were, as yours were and
are). But it’s unlikely you’ll remember today and
 
this poem isn’t going to help you do that. This poem
is neither a self-help poem nor a help-anyone poem, it’s
 
a Welcome poem. Welcome, that is, to your loving
mother and father, welcome
 
to skies, birds and birdsongs, trees, oceans, dawns,
fairy tales, hugs, laughter (and you will have plenty
 
with your parents!). Welcome
to Earth, welcome to the universe, welcome
 
to dreams, to love, to music, to silences and peace, to
your cousin Mathias, to your aunts and uncles and grand-
 
parents, to playgrounds, constellations, flowers, to
your life. Yes, you were
 
born yesterday and the people who know and love your mother
and father already love you. Olivia Blossom, your name itself
 
a two-word melody and poem.

 
 


John Levy lives on the outskirts of Tucson.
 
 

previous page     contents     next page