April 2020
Bio Note: I've published four full-length collections of poetry and two chapbooks. "Stillness" is from
the manuscript of my fifth full-length collection of poems, which is still making the rounds of contests. "Brotherly
Love and Peace" emerged from something observed in the airport when my husband and I were returning home to California
from a recent trip to Switzerland, where our son and daughter-in-law currently work and where they live with two of
our grandchildren.
Stillness
—Late Afternoon, January, Southern California
As if an invisible bell
had been dropped
over the world. The leaves
of the willow stopped swaying
back and forth like a porch swing.
The feathery palo verde
stopped dusting the sky.
The long gold light
lay down. Shadows pooled
on lawns. Every rapt thing
paid the utmost attention,
waiting.
If ever I had been
that quiet, listening,
who knows
what I would have heard.
Originally published in Sheila-Na-Gig 3:3 (Spring, 2019).
Brotherly Love and Peace
Directly in front of us, on the muddled
line to our airline’s counter in the chaotic
crush of Geneva Departures the Saturday
before Christmas: a young man with Downs,
accompanied by an unsmiling middle-aged woman.
He turns to greet my husband and me
very cheerfully, as if we were grandparents
equally happy to re-unite. Left of the ticket agent,
a tall, stalwart uniformed official stands yelling
Allez-y, Allez-y, his rapid hands waving suitcases
onto the scale. When his turn comes, the young man
trundles over his own. Then he puts both palms flat
on the shouting official’s chest
and pats him slowly, appreciatively
and thoroughly down to his waist—
as if he were a much-loved perp,
who also needs to chill.
Blessedly, the officer does and says
absolutely nothing in response,
except to raise his waving arms
a little higher above his head,
in effect giving the young man
a little more room for his mission,
while not even pausing his own Allez-y.
©2020 Judy Kronenfeld
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