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Volume 27, Number 1 (2003) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum POETRY by STAN BIDERMAN [338] |
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I’m spending way too much time searching for a writing spot, climbing up slippery mountains, ducking under thorny brush. My mother would be frightened – she would think I am in danger of falling. I’ve been falling my whole life without ever letting go. I forget the danger. I’m just rooting around, looking for a place to write. Instead, I find an annoying mosquito, see the sun shimmering white light around glorious mountaintops, watch pine trees in shadows of boulders which will fall soon – in the next ten or twenty thousand years. The pines are beautiful, and comfortable in their peace – Do I dare warn them of the boulders? Mother would. It would be important for her to warn them of the danger. I am surrounded by desert flowers – tiny yellow six-part blossoms, pink teacups, purple buds. There are cacti right below me. Should I be careful not to slip and fall into them or write of their subtle victories? I am with friends; they seem ready to leave. Should I hurry? It took so long to find this spot. There are better spots I know there are better spots. This spot is hard. There is no soft space to lean back. My buttocks ache from the hard pillow of rock. There’s no way I can write here. Perhaps where Bruce is. That looks like a better spot. Or Mark, he climbed higher; it must be better. Or Mel, who stopped before and again now. He found two places to write! I look up at the desert waterfall and down to the dry pool below, filled with autumn leaves. I see mountains, hazy in their distance and a rock wall of a million facets on my right. I see an ice cool, moistureless pale blue sky clear to heaven and the verdant songs of Pine Canyon stretching below. I see tall grasses, infinite rocks from shards to continents. I see a canopy of trees and left-handed shadows. I hear the voices of fall and the voices of friends. I see sights so stupendous that I can’t begin to describe them. I see all this, but I’ve still found no place to write. |
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for evening’s magic at Glen Springs. Before we lived in ghettos, we were people of the earth. Our noble ancestry is that of capable men, men skilled in hunting loving living crying and dying We were not afraid. The ancient windmill spins round and round, darting in one direction, then the next, like men spinning and darting. The rugged Chisos lie off to my right, a black-cragged monolith, as the sun lights a face I can no longer see, while to my left the impossibly brilliant pink-white face of the Sierra del Carmens is kissed goodnight by evening’s sun. Having shut off the deafening din of my life’s everyday desert, I deeply breathe the subtle sounds of life– the winds rustling in the cottonwoods . . . birdtalk . . . the gentle buzz of my personal kamikaze fly . . . the satisfied breath flowing out from my body . . . Earlier today, I rushed from nowhere to nowhere. Everywhere becomes nowhere when I rush. As I stop rushing shifts– I see fresh rustling leaves dance in rushing winds. I feel a gently rushing breeze cool my sun-baked face. I see the fly busily rush to some place unknown. It is life’s paradox. Einstein was right– the faster we move, the more of a blur it becomes. Einstein was a capable man. We are all Einstein’s brothers. |
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You want the rest. You are a jealous, evil mistress– we dance together in an empty dark space of hollow black skeletons. You steal my spirit my joy my strength my serenity. You rob me of my consciousness and fill me with anger greed and fear. I dance with a devil, sunken eyes filled with deep-set gold-glowing embers of evil. You dance circles on the graves of spirits and, stupefied, I dance along, an unconscious accomplice. Constantly, unerringly, the anxiety creeps into my mind, goose bumps rise on my shoulders, control churns me forward plodding elliptically on a dark stage. Holocaust: You have tormented my family and my family’s family. You birth corpses surrounded by flesh, rotting on the inside. You are an evil experiment of lasting consequence. I’ve given you half a life. You’ll have to fight me for the rest. |
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Stan Biderman, the son of Holocaust survivors who migrated to
Texas after WW II, was born in Dallas in 1951. He now lives in Austin.
His first language was Yiddish. Biderman attended the University of Texas
where he received both his undergraduate and law degree. He practiced law
for fifteen years and now works as business consultant. He is the author
of a book of poetry entitled, Everything Changes: A Spiritual Journey
(Austin, Texas: Plainview Press, 1996) from which the poems published here
are reprinted.
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