gershon hepner Poems

Without the windings of my violin
you cannot hear attenuated tones
I used to play, nor do my fingers spin
the dials that they turned on telephones
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Down the passage that we didn’t take,
past the door we never opened, lie
goals that once we tended to mistake
as quite impossible, and still deny
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Picking, outside my garage,
ten tomatoes, small and shiny,
which I ate with French fromage,
I concluded being tiny
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For dormice most of life is summer
for tortoises a lot of it is winter,
for poets cruel spring’s a bummer,
but fall is all you have if you are Pinter.
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Don’t vote Republican or buy
what’s advertised, and only drink
in moderation, while you try
to love the thoughts that others think,
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Seen, it turns out, is not said,
When different, said is not decisive.
I see you lying in our bed,
misleadingly divisive
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Since you are so full of melodies,
when I am not harmonizing them
it’s as though I’ve lost the thoughts that tease
dreamers when they’ve been aroused from REM.
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The warm air you exhale
may make some people groggy,
but with your breath I sail
to shores where, though it’s foggy,
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After Solomon Ibn Gabirol

He wrote a letter on the garden in
mixed hues of indigo and violet-blue,
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It’s harder to worship the unseen
than images believers have constructed;
imagination only is a queen,
and views of kings are never unobstructed.
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