Lori Levy
Lori Levy and her husband Avi on vacation in Norway
Lori Levy has always liked writing poetry ever since her sixth-grade teacher got her hooked by assigning the students to write poems in her class. She started writing poems out of class and, despite some breaks, never really stopped. For Lori, writing poetry is like painting with words.
Her poems have been published in Rattle, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry East, Confrontation, and numerous other print and online literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Her work has also been published in medical humanities journals, including a hybrid (poetry/prose) piece she co-authored with her father, a physician. One of Lori’s poems was read on a program for BBC Radio 4.
Her chapbook, What Do You Mean When You Say Green? and Other Poems of Color, was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books. Color plays an important part in the poems in this collection. Her book, “Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont," was published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2024 as part of the Jewish Poetry Project.
Lori lives in Los Angeles with her extended family (her grandchildren keep her busy and entertained!), but "home" has also been Vermont, where she grew up, and Israel, where she lived for 16 years. Panama also felt like home to her when she spent several months there visiting her son and granddaughters. "
Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
I saw Lori Levy as a soul sister as soon as I read her delightful, charming poems on Your Daily Poem about her grandmas, her parents, her grandchildren and aging. We also cross paths daily as we both leave comments on the YDP poems. Whether it is my poem or another, I always go back to make sure I read what Lori has to say. So when we finally connected in 2023, I wasn’t surprised when she said she enjoyed my poems and comments also.
Although she tells the story of her life in her own signature style, I can relate to what she says to my life. She reminds me of the realities of life and how precious it is and how lucky we are to have people in our life who love and cherish us. Through metaphors and carefully crafted language, Lori paints the landscape of her life in these poems I am proud to publish.
SIBLINGS
They are like gifts, precious ones
I treasure more and more each year.
Thank you, Ma and Da, for giving me
my siblings: a brother and two sisters.
I couldn’t have chosen better ones
to join me on the twists and turns, the ups and downs
of this journey we call life.
I can count on them to make me laugh,
sometimes so hard I pee my pants.
We listen to each other’s triumphs, worries, woes
and love each other as we are,
all oddities included. My siblings spark my awe:
my brother mows his lawn in Vermont
while listening to a podcast on the meaning of life.
One sister rides a mountain bike, exploring the desert
near her home in Israel, cycling down the northern coast
of Greece with her women's riding group.
My other sister, skilled in shadows, lighting,
color, depth, brings landscapes alive with acrylics
or oil paints. With charcoal in her hand, a twig of cotton
becomes a mystery, seductive in its beauty.
My siblings enthuse over pinkish purple lupines
in a forest in Norway in June,
where we vacation with our spouses—
who laugh with us and know that a trip with us
means rising early, being punctual, not missing out
on what we want: waterfalls, trails, fjords, sculpture gardens.
Thank you, Ma and Da, for giving me siblings who make me
want to climb over rocks with them to get close to a glacier.
Siblings who know the importance of stopping now and then
for coffee and Norwegian cinnamon buns.
AT MY FATHER'S FUNERAL
We are lucky: the sun comes out
when we bury my father, a welcome warmth
in this colder than usual winter in Israel
as though he's arranged this for us,
still warming, protecting us.
The day after the funeral the sky
begins to cry, pouring and pouring
like those who wail and beat their chests
in grief. I should be the sky, should be
sobbing at the loss of my beloved father,
but it seems I am the desert
that surrounds his kibbutz: my eyes are dry.
Will the tears come later?
Sometimes rain fills the wadis,
and the desert becomes a torrent, roads flooded, blocked.
Now it is the season, the time of year when
life bursts from the sand, buds opening, blossoming.
On Saturday the roads are jammed:
carloads of people coming out for no other reason than
to gaze at pink, yellow, red, purple flowers
and to picnic among them. How can I cry
when I can't feel his absence?
When my father is blooming in my heart,
vibrant as the anemones that paint the dunes red,
IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW
For Ma on her 88th Birthday
You are a butterfly, Ma,
beautiful, delicate,
flitting from flower to flower,
tasting the nectar in each one.
There are many flowers in your world,
not just the lavender
blossoming outside your door,
but whatever catches your fancy:
a colorful rock, a shell, a bird or
a decoration on a lawn. Could be
anything: a pretty hat, a necklace.
You are drawn with delight to
a cherry tomato in a bowl,
a book, a poem (mine!).
We, your family, are your flowers, Ma.
You alight on each one with a smile,
a laugh. With grace.
You taste the sweetness in each one.
Even when you clean,
you are a butterfly, landing lightly
on a speck of dust, a stain, a crumb.
You are a butterfly, Ma.
A flutter of beauty, color, joy
in our lives.
IN THE GARDEN OF GRANDMA
Something tempts him in the garden. Armor-plated, black,
so small he almost misses it, crawling in the soil
where he’s digging. He scoops with his shovel,
plucks it from the dirt: a roly poly in his palm.
His sister inches closer, peering at his hand.
She is one, he is four. We stare,
the three of us intrigued—though I, their grandma,
focus more on them than it.
What is it that makes him poke and prod
while she blows kisses at the bug?
The roly poly curls into a ball.
They watch, seduced, waiting for another trick.
It’s knowledge that they crave: what is this armadillo bug?
What can it do? He flicks it to the ground,
where, upside down, it wriggles all its legs.
She smiles, wows. He presses with his finger,
pushing it deeper into the earth.
Pill bug, potato bug, roly poly—buried, but not dead.
The children play, I do what grandmas do.
Maybe the tiny thing is hungry, I suggest.
Or needs a home.
The boy stops squashing to consider this,
then helps me make a bed of leaves.
What is it now that softens his hand
to set the creature gently down
and offer it a blade of grass?
His sister—charmed to see it straighten and stir—
blows another kiss.
WHAT DID YOU SAY?
I don't know how to help
my aging parents. I want to lighten
their lives. Brighten the space
between one meal and the next.
But here I am on this visit,
a repeater of words. A translator of sorts.
No French romancing the pink of my tongue,
no quick-tempoed Spanish flamencoing my lips,
just English to English as I sit between them,
telling him what she said and her what he said.
I open wide, try not to garble or mangle,
rowing us forward, past the whats
that pop up like rocks, blocking the stream.
His hearing aid is good, but nothing like the magic
promised in the ads, especially when she forgets
to face him when she speaks. She hears,
but doesn't always listen the first time—
or understand his new voice,
softened, strained by Parkinson's.
One night we, their family, take them out to eat.
It's their 68th anniversary, and he—this man who
can't see well, hear well, walk well—
gets up to speak at the end of the meal,
wishes us all a marriage like theirs. A toast
to what works: a kiss in the morning, a kiss at night,
an expression of love goes a long way.
I raise my glass, laughing at myself.
Who said they need a translator?
Now I want to be a songcatcher
who gathers and records what flows between them:
Publication credits: "At My Father's Funeral" (Littoral Magazine in the U.K.), "In Case You Didn't Know" (Your Daily Poem), "In the Garden of Grandma" (Mom Egg Review,) and “What Did You Say” (The Poet anthology on the theme of family.)
The delight and importance of family--as they grow old, as they meet the world, and as we view them from our perch in the middle. Much delight is found in the little ones as they play in the garden, and in our elders as they communicate with each other much more clearly than we might understand. Thanks, Lori, for sharing these, and to Sharon for publishing them.
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