Night Dawns

by Henry Berne

36pp Poetry
ISBN 1-930907-56-7
$7

 

Henry Berne is a psychotherapist who began writing poetry eight years ago at the age of 70. He leads poetry and healing groups and offers workshops in poetry and symbolism of the unconscious mind. Henry has been published in Main Street Rag, Parting Gifts, Iodine, Peregrine, The Aurorean, Sanskrit, and Mature Years, among others. In the past, Henry has been a journalist and a teacher. Writing is now his teacher.

 

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NIGHT DAWNS

 

at sundown
another light
another world

softened edges touch
and blend
dreams enter

there is quiet
the streets of day
abandoned to their sweepers

now the promise of that other side

flaming satin ladies bring their music
their perfume
their dancing feet

and across a thousand miles
I feel the soft heat of you and yesterday
dawning again tonight

the moon plays sorcerer
and an owl paints your
portrait on my eyes

 

AFTER 9/11

 

I sit at my desk
observing a small Buddha
carved of sandalwood,
gently aromatic,
peaceful,
eyes closed in meditation.
Continuing to watch
I notice a change begin:
there is movement
under the eyelids.
the movement seizes
my attention.
The Buddha expands.
I am absorbed.
My eyes travel into
the Buddha’s eyes,
then my head.
Inch-by-inch, my body
becomes part of Buddha.
I am peaceful at first,
walking a mountain path,
flowers and bushes alongside.
The path descends.
I walk beside a stream
rising rapidly like
a flash flood,
but bloody now:
compelling.
I look at the room
...once familiar.

 

GERTRUDE STEIN'S POODLE

 

Try, if you dare, to climb into Gertrude Stein’s
mind, as she wound her way along the fractured
paths leading to the appropriate name for her poodle
—shall we listen in?

A dog is a dog is a dog

Nothing much so far . . .

Suddenly, out of the blue, so to speak, a Saint Bernard
charges into the scene and offers cognac from his barrel
to the trembling hands of her Gertrudeship.

hands are hands are hands, etc.

Grateful and soon half in the bag,
Gertrude continues to play the Saint card, moving
alphabetically “ Ste. Alma; Ste; Ann; St. Augustine!
YES!”

It has a ring has a ring has a ring to it!

And, in place of a recent condition of
there’s no there there
Something is now there and ready to take over.

St. Augustine enters, blesses the Persian rug
with a little something Alexandrian, marking
the territory, and again, and now there is

even more there there

There