Dedicated to my grandchildren, RUBY and AVA DRAHO-ZUCKERMAN
Never be afraid of the flicker
of life in your breast.
Try to swallow with joy
every moment of the nectar flow
like the phototaxic moth,
the growling mountain lion,
the pastoral blade of grass
with its chlorophyll facing the giving sun.
Be in awe of the hemorrhagic plunge
of the dentiginous great white
and the rapacious appetite
of the locust swarm.
At 79, I still am rallied to the heights of passion
by startlingly awakening from my dream’s death moment
struggling to understand what was dream and what “reality”
at Pamela’s argumentatively arousing eroticism,
at being seized by desire
to duplicate the violent artistry
of the virtuoso pianist playing
Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,”
at wanting to follow the wild dolphin
surfacing and diving in controlled rhythms
as he recedes into his amniotic sea,
at Aquarius’s ageless comfort
in the star-filled evening canopy
or to dance away consciousness
in the mesmerizing aura of djembe drum rhythms.
Do you know your moment?
your flickering flame?
Light up the universe
and then go dark.
Stephen Zuckerman 