Albert Bernstein
Stats
Pastime trenz pruca
Hometown seattle, washington
job photographer
interests landscape, portrait, travel
Poem Titles
> HERITAGE WON
> HERITAGE TOO
> TRILOGY
RESURRECTION
INSURRECTION
CONSOLATION
HERITAGE WON
Joseph, a Carpenter.
Lean, denim overalled and tempest tossed;
Who swung a hammer in the morning
With an arm as taut and leather hardened
As steam quenched steel by quitting time...
Burdened by trade tools
For framing naked city towers
On city islands.
A scaffold builder.
A Spartan craftsman...
Linking planks to beams, braces to trestles,
Hammering in stoic concentration and hard times.
A shaper of wood and the family to come home to...
A wife and three kids.
A spare, quiet, angular, blue eyed Lithuanian,
Who bore the insults of the slanted rain,
The bristling cold, and with equanimity,
A promise from Providence
To resurrect him from the WPA.
He worked as if a brother to the Irish and Italians
Who tossed rivets or slung buckets of mudded ‘crete,
Those who were also drugged by the same self-promises
Of better times.
He was a man of tall will,
Led by white shirted, bow-tied, cigar puffing
Bosses with Stetson hats,
And gold chained pocket watches
That chimed for lunch...
A lone carpenter whose framed buildings
At La Guardia Airport in 1936
Bore no bronze tribute plaques
Commemorating his name.
But he was proud of his work....
And I was proud of him.
As his son I see him there.
________________________________
HERITAGE TOO
Dora, brown eyed, dark haired, diminutive,
Young dreamer of old hopes and new promises.
Escaped the howling Russian hounds of cruelty.
Kept memories of brighter, younger days
And a dream to join a Quiet Man
To pledge each other's lives in the New Medina.
Unschooled, yet her written words
Were simple, as elegant simple words can be.
But later days could not inspire less muted songs
Within the work-worn, chosen. Quiet Man;
Nor he to her in the listless passage of relentless time.
Depression Years' bitter mill of poverty
Soon ground away romantic reveries, left mostly chaff,
The wistful wisps of nostalgic Claire d'Lunes
That barely fed her soul, her life, her three young sprites
And then became Guardian of what was then to be..
In loyal service to the knights of a dinner table,
An unheralded protector of her hungry huddled masses.
In her joy to bless their finished dinner plates,
Did quietly lament… an absent rose or subtle serenade...
And then to be... the last served.
She lit each flickering candle light on Friday nights ...
As if she heard phantom waltzes through amber halls…
Exchanged her husband’s silence
For love of three unkind young spirits
Whose brief, short moving shadows on the walls,
In time would grow then vanish at self completion.
Those child sprites grew as well could be ...
Past early gales of poverty.
But she did not live to see her third through growing years.
Her heart could not bear both weight and worried mind
And was called away before her selfless work was done.
There are great heroines who come our way
Who live as undeserved Small Icons of our youth's convenience.
But her past life does live in quiet corners of my mind,
In stature grown beyond the bravest heights of men.
As her son, I see her there.
________________________________
{Trilogy}
RESURRECTION
As Elders,
We remember the Young:
--The graceful, the quick,
The thoughtless.
Riding the bright, sweet,
Swinging Arc of Time.
Ambitious.
On the cusp of dreams
In planning,
Failing,
Succeeding,
Burning in love,
Burning to lose.
To fall and rise again,
To laugh and to weep,
To leap and soar
On diaphanous wings
To exquisite limits
Of their souls..
-- But that booty isn't theirs.
They didn't earn it.
We did.
Well seize it and flee
To the raucous music
Of their laughter.
________________________________
INSURRECTION
We, the young,
Dismember the Old:
--As contentious, rancid,
Bucolic
Waiting on the squeaking
Rocking chair of Time.
In apathy,
Slumbering in dreams
Of past hopes
Past failings,
Past beliefs,
Past memories.
Reminiscing on
Frail lost years.
Creaking; complaining
Of their rusted wings;
Holding on
In fragility.
--Their bodies are a heritage
Which didn't maintain.
We do.
We'll live forever
To happy music
Of our laughter.
________________________________
CONSOLATION
As your Elders,
look at us as Bent:
--Yet graceful in three-quarter time.
Still clutching that gentle, sweet,
Swinging Arc of Time.
Patient in our courageous age
On the cusp of dreams.
Wisp's of our future
Have failings; successes.
Burning with hopes,
Braving losses,
In the shuffle and gusts
Of rusting experience.
Now living to short limits
Of our tireless souls..
--But we are the cast image
Of your future selves.
Look at us as the bend
In your next profile.
And as for consolation--
Well dance to the music
Of your laughter.
Now I Lay Me Down..
(An Atheist's Prayer)
I used to think there was a God
A childish wish, I thought it odd.
His name is not important now;
(I've grown this old, I dont know how.)
I’d like to know if there's a plan.
I wish to know just where I stand.
I never slipped, nor would I sin,
So all my life, in hell I've been.
Perhaps I am, in large degree,
Too righteous for Etemity ?
"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell". (Buddhist proverb)
