View From the Needle
Art Heifetz If prayers could animate the matchstick arms that dangle by your side, I’d compose a dozen daily and post them on the old-growth cedars in Olympia which shoot straight up to Heaven. It’s been three years since you felt the numbness in your hands and your illness is still a terrible mystery to us, its cause and cure as yet undiscovered. All the doctors know is that room by room the body shuts down while the mind remains alert, that the muscles wither like spindly plants until, no longer able to breathe or swallow, you wait for the darkness to settle in. Seated in the brilliant sunlight of this revolving restaurant five hundred feet above Seattle, the end seems as far away as the sailboats in the sound. You sip the wine through a straw. You savor every bite of the prime rib, cut by the chef into tiny pieces. Your dress and jewelry have an understated elegance. Rose blush has brought the color back to your cheeks. You close your eyes and imagine that you’re dining in first class, looking through the cabin window at the billowing, red-tinged clouds while the earth in all its blue green splendor turns beneath your feet. Uncle Joe Art Heifetz You always smelled like limburger cheese and slibovitz. I remember how you held your nose between two fingers and blew it into the street how you slurped your borsht straight from the bowl how you said with a Polish accent "Vot a vunderful tuchus she has." A refined man you were not and yet you read the Sunday Times cover to cover as we fished in Flushing Meadows. Liquored up at your niece's wedding you made the fatal error of "goosing" my matronly Aunt Gert. You would have thought a live squawking fowl had found its way under her dress. Flushed with anger she clipped you with her powerful right pumped up by years of bowling and sent you sprawling on the ballroom floor. You believed that you were back in Lodz and wouldn't get up before all the damned Cossacks had gone. You never went within ten feet of her again. |
About the author:
Art Heifetz started writing poetry to win the heart of his beautiful Nicaraguan wife. After publishing 175 plus poems in 13 countries, he maintains a website at polishedbrasspoems. Please visit. |
