Storyteller of the Week

 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 88^th 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 68^th 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.)