Watershed Exploration in the Finger Lakes Region

Tour to Canadice Lake Finger Lakes Watershed with Steve Lewandowski 

Steven Lewandowski will lead an expedition to the shores of Canadice Lake. He informs us it is a big hole but one filled with water.  The trip is an optional activity as part of the 5th CLOUDBURST COUNCIL to be held Saturday afternoon May 14, 2016..

Meet at front entrance of lodge for carpooling

3 Poems from Leslie Gerber

photo of Leslie Gerber (not current)

Like Her

Someone who looks like her
is in the bed at night,
at the table in the morning,
walks with the dogs,
but doesn’t talk like her,
doesn’t wash her face,
knows me as a shadow.

Someone who sounds like her
may answer the phone
but doesn’t know what to say,
when asked her name
cannot respond,
mixes up the dogs’ names,
sometimes with mine.

Someone who moves like her
sometimes opens the door
but doesn’t know old neighbors,
cringes at the sight
of the postman,
looks at the mail
as if it were a meteorite.

Someone who feels like her
reacts to a hug
by hardening
and then doesn’t feel like her.
Retreats from water.
Wants more clothes
to protect her from touch.

Someone who looks like her
was once the sun
and now sleeps on the dark side
of the moon.
When she wakes, she watches
pages from her book
as they float off into space.

(from my book “Lies of the Poets”)


Naming

One day in 2005
I gave names to everything in the gym.

The first treadmill was Spencer,
the second Spencer Jr.
One bicycle was Armstrong–
for Neil, not Lance!
The next one was Sadie.
The big barbell weights were Marx Brothers,
the small ones Andrews Sisters.

When I had finished this task I took the list outside.
I had not noticed before
that the sky was so blue it made my eyes tear,
the clouds so white they looked like angels.

As I burned my list
so my ancestors could read it
I reflected on the damage I did to the air,
the ashes seeking to destroy the lungs of birds.
I resolved to stop driving one day a week
and to breathe as little as possible.

A moth came to me in my dreams that night
to thank me for my resolutions.
She apologized that all the butterflies were busy
but she was as white as the clouds.


Latvian Sprats

A small round can of tiny fish
with a transparent plastic top.
Sprats, it said in large type
but I had to search for the country: Latvia.

The fish were soft and tasty
with crunchy tails.
They came from Latvia, which has a city,
Riga, and nothing else I know

so I closed my eyes and looked hard
and saw a small girl in dirty clothes
lying awake on a cot in a dark room
shivering with cold and hunger.

Outside the room a wild boar
paced impatiently on a threadbare rug
its eyes green fire
its jaws steaming.

I opened my eyes and saw
the girl had the face of my children.
I was about to rush to her
but she whispered,

Do not come. If you were here
you would see so many in the streets
you would shrivel into ugly dust.

Stay home and buy more fish
so that my father can have work
and give me the bread.

Buy cans and leave them on the street.
Then, when someone takes one
follow her home and give her your money.

Then the image faded
and I could not remember
where I had bought the fish.

(new work)

Leslie Gerber (more current)

Leslie Gerber was born in Brooklyn in 1943. In 1964 he married a 
family of a woman and three small girls. After 5 years as a book 
cataloger at the Strand Book Store, he moved to Ulster County and 
started a mail order classical record business, Parnassus, which 
operated until 2008. He still publishes classical music CDs and DVDs. 
Despite a B.A. in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, he did mostly 
music criticism and only a little creative writing until he started 
writing poetry in 1999. He now lives quietly in Woodstock with his wife 
of 31 years.

New Poem by Martha Deed

photo by Martha Deed

May 9th at 12:50 PM

On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex .... The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — "That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond to-morrow." ‒ London Times correspondent William Howard Russell

(http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/spring-2011/spectators-witness-history-at.html)

Oh!

It's War I say

the Turkey Vulture's shadow passing across the battlefield no menace

to the House Sparrow that gained the half-built nestbox nest

grasses gathered and brought to bear for a few days but not one

used to block the door and so

the House Sparrow returned

once inside

it cannot leave

and there is a crying and shaking of elderberry branches

The House Wrens attack, parry, retreat

attack attack

A Chickadee and Cardinal fly in.  They perch on nearby branches

like elegant city people who watched Civil War battles from nearby hillsides

their picnic baskets outspread on blankets under trees

looking to see for themselves how the fight was going
yet not close enough to see that these are battles to the death

                                       — Martha Deed

New Poem by Martha Treichler

Conversation with Sam Abrams, Confucius, and Shakespeare


Sam starts with a number one nuclear rant
and gives us a good question right between the eyeballs,
"How are we better than the worst?"

I say, "Sam, forget the we! You are not responsible
for the we, only for the I!"

Confucius says," Sam, you should relax;
you are doing it about right, let's look at your record.
Knowledge, you are well informed. Check.
You are starting with your own self. Check.
Then you are on to your own community. Check.

Tolstoy interrupts, "I have made the point, rather strongly, I think, 
that the most important place is where you are
and the most important people are those right around you.
Sam, you are doing OK."

Will Shakespeare joins in, "Sam, they are right!
Cool it! Listen to us! As I have said so well,
to thine own self be true, and it shall follow as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.
So, no more rant, and keep your beat!

                                  ---Martha Treichler



Poem written after hearing John Roche's presentation on Sam Abrams, and hearing Kitty Jospe read Sam's "Our Holocaust."

elegy by Charlie Rossiter

elegy

kerouac’s gone

and cassady too

and the road dreams

and the beatness

and bird

and ‘trane

and the life call

that drove them

half-crazed across a continent

in search of

what it was

all about

what they were

all about

what it did

or did not mean

whatever happened to sonny barger

the original hell’s angels

and the drapes and teddy boys

who hung around

shoobopping to the drifters

and bo diddley

and later to the skinny supremes

whatever happened to payola

elvis wolfman jack

levis that shrink to fit

artifacts of a simpler

time and place

where are they now?

still around     still around

as the Platters sang

they would be museum pieces

in their original form

but elvis is dead

and the wolfman too

and levis have made it

in the suburbs

where they wrap around

the sprawling asses

of middle-aged housewives

who wouldn’t wear them then

for fear of losing their chances

at the dream lawyer

who’s now boring them to death

and driving them

to these pale reminders

of an age

that’s lost

and gone

Charlie Rossiter

(sorry I can’t be there this year)

minus one plus one by ryki zuckerman

minus one plus one

set out two plates

on the table

one for me

one for myself

who is good company

and speaks as much

as i listen

when not savoring 

the savories

or sweetly smiling

over the sweets

who has accompanied me

to so many lands and feasts

over the years

when no one else would

or when there was no one else

to ask to engage

in conversation or dining

let the single lovers

of the world 

rejoice

in their beloved

who stays true,

who is to me,

myself.

                         ---ryki zuckerman

Chandelier by William Heyen

Chandelier

Decades ago my late friend Martin Booth drove us from Cambridge

            to London where we read

at the Poetry Centre with beveled windows behind us, on an afternoon

            multi-mullioned.

The rain through which we'd sped that November Sunday

            had stopped,

& in that elegant room light intensified from behind us, coalesced

            on Martin's back

where he stood at a carved oak lectern & railed against English manners,

            & remembered Chatterton,

& diatribed the current poetry scene in Britain as puerile, sterile,

            & said that the American

here with him today wasn't, so that by the time I read, half the audience

            had sworn patriotic allegiance

to all those Martin labeled "decorous versifiers," & were pissed at me.

I don't remember

what poems of mine I spoke, nature or the Holocaust or both, but now

            I'll leave merry England—

its chandelier disappears as the room brightens with prisms

            of polite applause,

then Martin's fierce aspect as he slammed his car door & drove us out of there

            like bards from hell.

                                                                        (Martin Booth  1944-2004)

                             — William Heyen