March 2017
Judy Kronenfeld
judy.kronenfeld@ucr.edu
judy.kronenfeld@ucr.edu
A long-ago transplanted New Yorker, I live with my husband in Riverside, California, when we are not visiting children and grandchildren on the East coast or in more far-flung places. Retired from teaching in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, I volunteer for a local literary arts nonprofit, help edit the online magazine, Poemeleon, and write poems, nonfiction and the occasional story — as much or as little as the days invite. My fourth full-length collection of poetry, Bird Flying through the Banquet, is due out from FutureCycle Press in the spring of 2017. For more information, and a selection of my poems and prose, please see http://judykronenfeld.com
Agnostic Psalm
I praise the Silence for his silent grace
while knives all rest contented in their racks.
I walk on tiptoe past my numbered days.
No midnight phone call bursts my dreams’ green haze,
my children safely skip the sidewalk's cracks.
I praise the Silence for his silent grace.
I've no effects, so far, from gamma rays,
my dad's heart has bypassed the speeding facts.
I walk on tiptoe past my numbered days.
Dive for the ground when Gorgon drive-bys gaze,
don't breathe beneath the neon cataract,
and praise the Silence for his silent grace!
Mild kids grin down from freeway overlays,
my love comes smiling from the school of knocks.
I walk on tiptoe past my numbered days.
In valley-of-the-shadow passageways,
no-One's too close for comfort at my back.
I praise the Silence for his silent grace
and walk on tiptoe past my numbered days.
Originally published in The Wilshire Review, No. 4 (2000).
© 2017 Judy Kronenfeld
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