Once upon a time, I wrote poetry!

Somewhere deep inside my #LetsDiscuss2020 #DiscussionSunday post about my regimen vs. impulse posting, I posed the question if anyone thought it might be fun for me to post some of my poetry here on my blog. Well, a couple of people showed interest, and I appreciate that. As for the rest of you, you are welcome to just click or scroll on by if you aren’t poetry people (I promise, I won’t be the least bit offended)!

Also… it was recently some national poetry day somewhere, and it seems I missed it. Well, better late than never, right?

This one was written in 2000!

As you may know, I live in Israel, where there is mandatory conscription for all (boys and girls). I wrote this poem when my sister’s son went into the army.

Son of Your Right Hand

Part I. – The Leaving

His kitbag fills heavily
with carefully folded
khaki mixed emotions,
while the wrinkled fears
are placed gingerly
back on his parent’s shelves.

Mismatched pairs
of loose-fitting bravado
and second-hand macho
are stuffed, with all his force
into the narrow spaces
where he had just removed forever
and hung up reluctantly
his shrunken old suit
of freshly laundered youth.

Part II. – The Oath

Lines of khaki marching
in starched precision;
an imitation of so many
abandoned toy figures
that now gather
hand-me-down dust.
Joking clown smiles
wiped clean from fresh faces
in dull solemn portraits of allegiance.
Arms that once draped in fluid ripples,
snap into synchronized salutes.

Then, as the last echoes
of their pledge fall stiffly
onto the hard tarmac
the uniforms jumble and whoop
in nodding remembrance
of packed up cartons
that store the building-blocks
of their collective youth.

Part III – His Mother

With eyes as green
as his military suit
she gathers still-life
moments in limp piles.

She caresses paper curls of hair
as golden as his dress-uniform buttons,
and shadows of frozen tears
as shining as his polished weapon.

Pages of half-smiles as crooked
as the beret on his cropped head
fall between her weak fingers
with the echoes of his laughter
and thrown-off jokes.

His telegraphic calls
filled with holes of his assurances
only add to the awkward heap
that drops behind the shelves
of her brittle yearnings.

Standing at the doorway
of his abandoned room,
she leans her sighs
against the solid frame.
His slanting guitar strings
vibrate with her discord.

© Davida Chazan, 2000. Part I of this poem was first published in the (now defunct) online magazine Quasar Review, along with two other poems. The other two parts were ever published.

Photo: Curtsy of Pixabay: eyalyas 

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